Style Tips for Ad Writers
Your unconscious writing style is how you write when you’re simply being yourself. You also have a formal style and you might even have a whimsical style. But three styles is usually as good as it gets.Language, however, is extraordinarily plastic. You can make it do anything you want. With a little conscious effort, you can speak and write in a thousand voices. The possibilities are intoxicating.I’m going to give you 10 ways to expand your literary voice. But please, I’m begging you, don’t get legalistic or analytical with this stuff. Style is like a frog; you can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process.Let’s begin with a sentence in ordinary language: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos and cheese.”1. Add.Now let’s add the word “and” between each of the ingredients. Notice how the list gains rhythm and length: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms and tomatoes and onions and broccoli and jalapenos and cheese.”Adding conjunctions slows a list down. And depending on how the list is intoned, adding conjunctions can (1.) give it greater dignity or (2.) convey the author’s own impatience by signaling that he, too, thinks the list is long.2. Subtract.Next we’ll subtract words from the original sentence, including the standard “and” that usually appears between the next-to-last and last items in a list: “Optional ingredients: mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos, cheese.”Subtraction adds authority, accelerates the pace, says more in fewer words.3. Substitute.Engage the imagination by substituting an unexpected adjective or verb for the one you would normally write: “Personalize your omelet with Splash! into the bubbling butter: mushrooms or tomatoes, onions or broccoli, jalapenos or cheese or all-of-them all at once.”Okay, I confess, I not only substituted jazzy verbs for boring ones, I repeated “or” four times and “all” twice. On purpose. For Style.4. Rearrange.I might have said, “I purposefully repeated ‘or’ and ‘all’ for the sake of style.” Instead, I rearranged the sentence to create multiple false endings like the multiple punch lines at the end of a Steven Wright joke.You can also rearrange chronology: “We will buy, and rush into the mall.”5. Disconnected Lists.Combine wildly disconnected things in a list, then connect them together in the closing fragment of the sentence.“A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer’s leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.” – Marcel Proust“Sparkling eyes, laughter, sunshine and speed come with every Nissan 370Z Convertible.”6. Personification.Give human attributes to inanimate objects.The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming in,And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before… – Robert Frost, Once By the Pacific“The gas pedal of this car throbs with hot impatience.”7. Break the rules of logic.Tease the imagination by stating things that don’t make immediate sense.“In two words, im possible.”“But I can't be out of money, I still have checks!”8. Break the rules of grammar.Slip the handcuffs, seize attention.When Winston Churchill was reprimanded for ending a sentence in a preposition, he apologized, then added, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” No one remembers the rest of the conversation.Gertrude Stein is remembered for saying, late in life, “There ain’t any answer. There ain’t going to be any...
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