WORD VALUES IN ADVERTISING 1. ,Wprds are tools of advertising.—In the mech anism of advertising there are three lactorS: 1, the words and illustrations which are the tools; 2, the layout which is the framework; 3, the balanced ar rangement of the whole advertisement, which includes the illustration, the decoration and the copy.
The words are the tools by which the advertiser con veys certain ideas of his own to the prospective cus tomer. The larger the number and the greater the variety of words he has at his command the more readily can he "put across" his thoughts into the minds of others.
The question of word values is of tremendous im portance in advertising. The use of the right .word, that is, the word that has the greatest suggestive power for the particular instance, is a matter requir ing close study.
Asmen_haxe_greaterslemands made-on their :time, word valuestake on a new significance. The style .of-successful is as different from. the Stiff,. roundabout, elaborate phraseology of even two generations ago as our modes of travel are different from. those of the stagecoach era.. New words are coined, sentences and_paragraphs, are shorter,_.and-out phrases are concrete. Nowhere is conformity to these modern standards more necessary than in the writing of advertisements.
2. Economizing the reader's time.—In this com plex age, economy of the reader's time must be con sidered in wording an advertisement. This factor is of importance no matter to whom the message is ad dressed. In his "Philosophy of Style," Herbert Spencer gives us the fundamental reason for making language clear and simple: Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and better arranged its parts the gr_eater produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or listener has at each moment but a amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret, the symbols presented to him requires part of this power ; to ar range and combine the images suggested requires a further part ; and only that part which remains can be used for real izing the thought conveyed. Hence,th re time and at
tention, it lakes to receive and understand each sen ence, tie less time and attention can be given to the contained idea, and the less vividly will that idea be conceived. - .
Consequently, if the language and the sentence structure of an advertisement are such that the mes sage is quickly grasped, the more likely is it that the appeal will effect a sale of the thing advertised. The ideas must be simple, they must be well arranged and they must be vividly presented. All of us like to avoid the labor of useless thinking just as much as we like to escape avoidable physical drudgery.
3. Clearness.—Simplicity of language implies clearness. There must be no doubt as to what is meant. An error of any sort not only distracts the attention from the subject matter, but also irritates those who know better. Errors of number in nouns and verbs, the omission of a necessary apostrophe, disagreement of pronouns, the misuse of adjectives for adverbs, ,improper tense sequence, incomplete comparisons and other errors are inexcusable in ad vertisements unless colloquialism is introduced for a purpose, and when it is perfectly evident that it is meant as humor. Sentences such as "Food bakes quicker and more uniform"; "Each food cell is blasted by steam explosion, thus all are fitted to digest," de tract from the effect of an advertisement.
Loose construction, too,. is harder to understand than unified, coherent structure. "These rain-coats carry with them a powerful selling argument because they are rain-repellent and still they don't even sug gest this tremendous advantage in trade in their classy appearance." Such muddled construction and indefinite phraseology do not produce conviction and desire on the part of the reader.