Slightly Askew

I was once - I say “once”, it’ll probably happen again - confronted by someone questioning my use of the word and at the start of a sentence.

When I questioned why the position of this little word caused a problem, the response was this:

My teacher at school always told me not to start a sentence with and.

Many of my teachers weren’t particularly clever. My English teacher often changed her mind to go with the general consensus of the class. I swear on at least one occasion she stole my answer and passed it off as her own. So forgive me if I don’t really care for what your English teacher taught you.

Sadly, a simple “fuck off” doesn’t satisfy people; you have to provide evidence. Fortunately I found some on the back cover of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words.

The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it.

Thanks Bill.

The act of questioning someone else’s work is sadly commonplace. Long gone are the days when people were simply trusted to do a job well. Management consultants probably call it inclusivity. I much prefer interference. Or back-seat driving.

David Ogilvy sums it up brilliantly (as he often does).

Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

Thanks David.

If your goal is to knock people’s confidence and generating average work, keep opening your mouth. Otherwise, it’s probably better that people wonder why you don’t speak than why you bother to at all.

Don’t be a dullard.  I’ve probably read it before, I’ll probably read it again.  Make your stab at it interesting.  Please.

If you like looking stupid, continue to spell things the wrong way.  If you don’t, wake up and smell the apostrophe.

Linking to a site in the middle of text is good.  It offers the reader a way out of your boring copy, or provides evidence that you’re not talking utter shit.

Do not even think about using the word solution.  Ever.  You are a fucking gardener.  You do not offer gardening solutions.

Write like you talk.  Unless you speak like a fool.

Punctuation isn’t word-decoration for posh people, you thickie.

You want people to find you in Google for certain words - copywriting, for instance.  So use those words - like copywriting - every now and again.  You can even format those important words - like copywriting - in bold type to really ram the idea down Google’s throat.

But don’t use that word - you know the one I mean - that often, or Google will realise you’re a filthy, cheating, dirty spammer.  With a black hat.

Write lists with irksome headlines like Eleven copywriting tips to turn your ugly ducklings into an elegant swans!

Get your keyword into italics without anyone realising.

Use loads of paragraphs to mask your minimal output.

I visited McDonald’s today.  I ordered a Big Mac and waited patiently.  A young lady returned with my order and, as she placed it in my hand, said:

You should stop putting fatty foods into your body and get more exercise.  Why do you do it?  You should have more self-respect; a little more care and consideration about what you eat wouldn’t go amiss.

This, of course, didn’t happen.

However, I did go into Next’s town centre store in Ipswich.  It’s a familiar scene: rails and rails of clothes on plastic hangers; greetings cards in cellophane wrappers; and make-up gift sets in clear plastic boxes.

They also had reusable bags with the carrying the slogan ‘dare to care’.

If your company isn’t prepared to put in the effort, why should your customers?

Me and the lady were being good citizens on Saturday: paying-in some money for a friend at a high street building society who are, apparently, proud to be different.

In walked a young couple.  They went to one of those ask-a-question queues (we were in the cashier queue, there was a queue for the machines, and a queue of people wondering what queue to join).  The male-half of the couple spoke.

I’d like to change my address please.

I really wanted to make an amusing comment about needing an estate agent instead of a building society, but my seldom-seen restraint kicked-in.  The customer services representative (or whatever his job title was) responded.

Okay sir, I’m going to need you to fill in one of these forms.

As if people don’t have enough bloody forms to fill in when they’re moving house, I thought, restraint still intact.

Well, how long’s it gonna take?  Cos I’m trying to buy something over the internet and I can’t cos my address don’t match the one on the card.

Surely it would be instant, wouldn’t it?  All they have to do is change a record on a database.

We have to post it to central records, sir.  It will take a few days….

…but since I’m in a good mood, and it’s an exceptionable circumstance, I’ll do it for you today.

What?

You’re in a good mood?  What’s that got to do with some bloody customer service?  Just change the fucking address!  And if you can do it instantly for them, you can do it instantly for every other person that needs to change their address.  I can’t imagine they get more than five requests a day.

If there’s a logical shortcut that improves the standard of customer service, make that shortcut the standard.

Surely?

Apostrophes are like knives: bloody dangerous in the wrong hands.

Now, as we know: apostrophes are used to denote possession or to denote missing letters.  Never plurals.  Never.  Even when it (arguably) adds a touch of clarity.

A bugbear of mine is do’s and don’ts.  It should be dos and don’ts.

Yes, dos looks like something computer programmers use, but do’s is just wrong.  There is no missing letter and no possession - so just leave that poor apostrophe out of it.

And if you’re going to persist with do’s, then for the sake of being consistently stupid, you should write don’t’s.

Pluralising common words often leads to trouble.  The following poem is from Woe is I and is rather wonderful.  (And yes, noes is the plural of no.)

Words to the Whys

Ups and downs and ins and outs,
Forevers and nevers and whys.
Befores and afters, dos and don’ts,
Farewells and hellos and goodbyes.
Life is a string of perhapses,
A medley of whens and so whats.
We rise on our yeses and maybes,
Then fall on our noes and our buts.

You’re just about to sit down for dinner when the doorbell goes.

Ding-dong.

Hello Sir, you don’t mind if I come in, do you?  Brilliant, I’ll just take a seat here for a few moments.  Yeah, I’d love a cup of tea.  Milk, two sugars, not too strong.

So, anyway, I thought you might be interested in buying one of these wonderful new t-shirts that we’ve designed.  It’s got a hilarious strapline about saving water by drinking beer on the front.  You’ll love it.  Comes in four different colours.  If you buy it today, we’ll give you one-third off.  Yes, that’s right, one-third off.

And that’s about all.  Don’t worry about the tea, you’re too slow.  I’ll see myself out.  Thanks for listening.

Oh and if you didn’t want to hear from me, you should have unchecked a small box on our website when you enquired about a t-shirt a few weeks ago.

Would you even contemplate visiting that website again, let alone buy their product or service?  Of course you wouldn’t.

So why does your business send people emails that they didn’t ask for?  That they were just too lazy to opt-out of?  What does that say about your company?

It says you’re desperate and you’re scared.

Opt-in, on the other hand, says you’re confident that you’ve got something to offer that’s worth reading.

So which one are you?

It was great, thanks.

We got back yesterday, and popped into Sainsbury’s today to pick up a few bits of food.  We’re off to a wedding tomorrow, so when we noticed a Pizza Express voucher, we thought it would make a nice gift - y’know, a meal on us, so to speak.

Presenting our gift voucher to the gormless-looking lady at the checkout, we were greeted with an unsurprisingly gormless facial expression followed by a panic-stricken look around for help.  It came in the form of a boy who was probably just about to start puberty.  As he unhurried over, Tweedle-Dee at the checkout asked:

Do we even sell these?

No, of course you fucking don’t, love.  I just want to pay twenty quid for something that I’ve brought into the shop myself.  There’s a credit crunch on (so we’re told every day) and I thought that J. Sainsbury PLC could do with a booster.

Welcome home.

Please note: this rant isn’t about people who work in Sainsbury’s or any other supermarket - just that silly woman.  My mother works in Sainsbury’s, you see.

Excuse me?

I’ll think you’ll find that you sent me the unsolicited email.  So who the hell are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?

Sending an email from an address such as do-not-reply@igonorant-arseholes.com is akin to phoning your mate and saying:

Hi there, I’ve got something to tell you.  I don’t want your opinion on what I’ve got to say, nor am I looking for any answers.  I’m just going to talk at you for a bit and then hang up.

Those with any sort of self-esteem would hang up first, of course.  Obviously, injecting an abrupt:

How about you fuck off

before doing so would be ideal.

If you want people to buy a product, converse with them.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s credit cards (yup, that’s you Tesco; every little bit helps you know) or music (Polydor - you’re on the ropes, don’t make it worse for yourselves), allow your customers to speak to you.

They’ll like you all the more for it.

Some time ago, an article by Erin Kissane stirred a hatred inside of me.  Not because I didn’t like the article; I loved the article.  She give a thorough and humourous explanation as to why the word solution is, well, shit.

“Solution” is much too vague to be useful.

And she’s absolutely right.  I went to an ebusiness seminar today and every godforsaken IT company in attendance were parading their products as solutions.  Even better (and by that, I mean worse), an end-to-end solution.  As I sit writing this, I’m still no closer to fathoming-out exactly what those products actually did.

So this nonsense has to stop now.  Just because the financial sector is often riddled with self-indulgent jargon, the IT crowd should not be trying to play catch-up.  If you’re a consumer, and someone can’t explain what something does without using the word solution, that something probably isn’t worth buying.

After all: you can call a turd a bowel disposal solution, but it’s still a turd.

Ah, the evil mouth ulcer.  Foe to many, friend to none.

Remember the 80s cartoon Dungeons & Dragons?  Where every episode brought new hope of a resolution; that finally those brave teenagers would be reunited with their loved ones?  So near they came, and yet so far it all transpired to be.

The magical cure for mouth ulcers appears to be similarly elusive - yet not without hope.  There’s sugar-free Rinstead pastilles (they’re like extra tough Wine Gums) and Anbesol gel.  Not to mention Bonjela, rinsing with salt water, and - my Mother’s favourite - a good night’s sleep.  I tried, they failed.

The mouth ulcer remains, and the pain of eating salt & vinegar crisps frightfully obvious.

But what’s that coming over the hills?  Is it a monster?  No, it’s a rancid tasting mouthwash, that - golly gosh - seems to work.  Yes, my fellow sufferers, we no longer need to, er… suffer.

As someone who’s been riddled by these bloody things for the last ten or so years of my life, Cordosyl comes recommended.  Sure, it feels like you’ve dipped your tongue in hydrochloric acid, but as we all know: if it hurts, it works.

If you don’t suffer from ulcers and you’re feeling smug reading this, go paper-cut your eyelids or something.  I’ll laugh at you when you’ve got migraine; take some Nurofen you pussy.