Very Punny

Some people hate puns. In my family, if you can't take puns, you'll take some punishment. I grew up with wordplay and have a healthy appreciation for puns (thank goodness, or I wouldn't be able to tolerate my husband for five minutes).

Obviously, there's a time and a place; copywriters need to be judicious. It seems journalism allows more opportunity for punsters than digital marketing does. I wish I'd been the one to write this headline:

Take a Lesson (or 36) from Don

Just came across this fantastic infographic from Joanna Wiebe and Copy Hackers. I got a lot out of Mad Men, but it's wonderful to have the copywriting lessons all assembled in one place! Now I need to go rewatch the whole series.

Courtesy of: Copy Hackers

Repeat the right line.

Sometimes, a little repetition makes a great point, which is especially handy if you're really sure of the point you want to make. Check out this succinct "about" copy from theSkimm:

"Across subject lines and party lines" says a lot with just that little bit of epistrophe (the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses). You can't always fit "we're a bipartisan publication" into so few words.

But why "subject lines" and not "headlines"? Their service creates synopses of news, not emails. Nice effort here, theSkimm, but you need to push a little further.

Taglines: a punctuation parable.

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”--Oscar Wilde

Punctuation is important. Grandma, especially, thinks so.

I started out writing a post about Whirlpool’s brilliantly-punctuated new tagline: the beauty of the comma placement; the deliberate lack of period that gives the phrase a double meaning.

Three choices make this phrase wonderful. 

1. The choice to make "every day" two words, rather than one, makes "every" an adjective that modifies "day," rather than "everyday" an adjective that modifies "care." It's deliberately not "everyday care."
2. The choice to use a comma puts this phrase in the imperative mood, making "care" a commanding action verb. (Linguistics Girl has a great post explaining this.)
3. The choice not to use a period, which goes a long way toward reversing the grammatical effect of the first two choices, giving the phrase two meanings at once. Without a period, the tagline isn't wholly a statement. It can do double duty, conveying both "everyday care" and "every day, care." If it had a period, the imperative mood would be much stronger, leaving the "everyday care" message in the dust.

The new campaign is about the everyday care that families give one another, and also implies the kind of care Whirlpool appliances give to our laundry and dishes. (Whirlpool's new Every Day Care Project web page and supporting assets do a wonderful job of conveying this sense.) The double meaning of the tagline is brilliant. It reminds me of another tagline's precise word and punctuation choices.

Grammar Girl has a great discussion of the grammatical implications of the use of "different," rather than "differently," in this famous Apple slogan. The use of "different" allows the phrase to mean both "think about different kinds of computers" and "think in a different way." 

A colon punctuating this phrase, "Think: different" would have emphasized the first meaning, "think about different computers." Without the period at the end, the slogan would lose some of the weight of the imperative mood; it wouldn't be as strong a command. As it is, the phrase conveys both meanings beautifully.

It was my intention to praise Whirlpool, and their agency, for this carefully-wrought phrase, perfectly punctuated to pack in double meaning.

But when I went on Whirlpool's web site to take a screen shot of the tagline, I found it used WITH A PERIOD.

Come on, Whirlpool. Make up your mind. Every day, care ... about punctuation. 

Let's Eat, Grandma image thanks to Modern Austen.


There are other ways to make taglines work harder. See How to Make Words Do More Work.

Gear up to cover more creative ground.

I rode my bike the nine miles to work today. I live in a farming community outside a small city, and take a route comprised entirely of two-lane roads with no stoplights and very little shoulder.

I passed hulking blueberry bushes bursting with fruit and nearly obscuring the hand-painted sign reading "pickers wanted." Unnaturally still cornfields with leaves like a pair of corduroy pants I had hated in the fifth grade. Dusty swaths of potatoes flowering in faded-quilt colors: eggplant, butter, cream. The river a muddy smear, motionless and sullen.

I felt I was barely moving, too. My legs were churning and creating a happy cicada whirr in the gears, but I felt mired, as though I were pedaling through that thick river. Sleepiness was the culprit for my hazy thought process, and after a mile or so I woke up enough to look down and realize I was in the wrong gear.

By George6996 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

At that rate, as the road curved out from the woods into sprawling golden fields, gearing up didn't cost me much more effort, but my speed increased rather dramatically. I finally felt the morning open up around me and my bicycle begin to eat up the road. I passed the Tim's Upholstery sign on the side of a barn and the big, scruffy eagle's nest in the crag by the railroad tracks, and I thought about the day's work ahead of me.

First on my list was revising a web page that had been reviewed the previous day. "Why didn't you include such-and-such new product in the comps?" the client had asked. "Well, we hadn't been told about that product." Minor details.

The week before, my rewriting talents had been strained to the breaking point with a similar issue. "This page is actually for two audiences: the one that knows about our product and the one that doesn't. Can you rewrite to address both?"

Working with limited information is like riding a bike in the wrong gear: you can churn and churn and churn, but you're getting nowhere fast. But knowing all the products, all the audiences, all the strategic imperatives up front lets the team slide into that lovely, purring rhythm of productivity, making time, pounding out the miles of creative work.

My ancient Trek and I flickered past the country market, the ramshackle houses of the edge of town, past the cement factory and the broad, glittering expanse of Puget Sound. I pedaled hard, eager to get to that copy now that I could rewrite it in high gear.