just checked the J.Crew website, why I don't know since I'm on a spending diet, and looked at handbags. Guess what? Alison's handbag and related biographical information are back up! Unchanged, let me add. Can this be a stand-off? A challenge?
Tell ya what, if that copy is up for a whole week, I may sponsor a drive to send grammar, usage and style books to the J.Crew copy desk. Warriner's Handbook comes to mind. Strunk and White may be too elevated. As for A Uniform System of Citation.... even the Copywriter from Space doesn't deserve that. Yet.
Hello:
ReplyDeleteMay we suggest that if you are proposing to sponsor a drive to improve grammar on websites, then you may be in for rather a long haul!! Are you thinking to include spelling and punctuation as well? If so, then you may well be able to sell the entire package to HM Government in the UK who appear to be perennially worried about falling, or raising, 'standards'?
Jane and Lance, my ambition if you could even call it that is much smaller and simpler. I find the copy on a particular retail website so uninformative and poorly written that it's become beyond irritating. Garrison Keillor is a man who has an amusing radio show on our National Public Radio, and from time to time he asks his listeners to have a moment's compassion for the plight of the unemployed or underemployed English major. He even sells t-shirts for the benefit of P.O.E.M. (the Professional Organization of English Majors). Of course the shirts are really for the benefit of the radio station, although many have found the possible existence of the organization at least as credible as that of a Round Earth. Keillor's point is that our country teems with people who are familiar with the parts of speech and their functions, and when possible media decision-makers should hire these types rather than mouth-breathing semi-literates who have a total of 5 adjectives at their command. Here are some links you may enjoy:
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So while I cannot, nor do I wish to, take on a world of English-language-related causes, I do nurture a few pet peeves. The use of verbs as nouns is one of them, and the continued employment of this semi-literate to generate copy for a catalog that is read by impressionable young people is another. I have more. But you knew that.