Word Up

Who cares if copywriters arrive at the office in torn jeans and worn-out Ree boks? What bugs me is work that reads as if it were written by uncaring slobs.

We claim to prize literacy, yet so much advertising reads (and sounds) like voices of third-graders on the playground. We use simple, unimaginative words, and we state the obvious (“Sale! Now!”) as if we were announcing an arms treaty.

So why can’t we write as if we were addressing an audience capable of digesting more than two-syllable words? Maybe the real reason we’re afraid to sound like real writers is that we no longer have real writers as role models.