Copywriter’s Craft
Delving deep in our files of ‘Interesting Things’, we discovered this extract from a letter. It was written to ‘The Editor’ and featured in The Independent many moons ago.
It is in response to a previous correspondent bemoaning the way advertisements are the reason young people are confused about punctuation…
Sir – The craft of copywriting is all about preaching to the indifferent. It is designed to communicate not to educate.
There are, I suggest, worse things than a predilection for full points. Worse things than forming sentences without verbs or subjects. Worse things, indeed, than splitting infinitives. And one of those is splitting hairs.
Copywriting demands an agile brain, a wide general knowledge, a high IQ and so intimate an understanding of the Queen’s English that one can abuse it with impunity.
Well said that man.
Couldn’t have put it better ourselves. Well, we might have slightly rephrased some of it and perhaps broken up the text a little… ahh, the copywriter’s curse.
