Poorly-written writing: awkward, ambiguous, and ambivalent
I got something to tell you — the bulk of the story happens after this sentence.
It’s about 2 months ago, earlier this year. March is coming to a close; April will start off making fools of persons/places/things during its first day. I’m reading through the list of various Craigslist ads out of sheer boredom. One minute browsing the free page turns into several minutes, which somehow causes me to treat random pages with the ire and scrutiny of a person who’s very finicky about quality control.
For once, I am grateful for all the times I’ve had to help others out with their writing woes — sometimes, it was a required charity (thanks, Mom.) Other times, compensation was provided in varying forms of currency, barter, even favors.
But I digress. Right, I was talking about the scourge of bad ad titles.
Here’s a good example of a title: 7 eight foot used galvanized post (Loomis). Spoiler alert: the rest of that ad isn’t much better.
Here’s proof:
What does that mean? Try reading that shit out loud to yourself. I won’t judge you. Honest. IT would sound something like, “seven eight foot used galvanized post”
The fuck is a 7 eight foot? seveneight foot? Or would it be seven eightfoot? seven ate foot? Wasn’t seven eight a meme thing those kids invented not too long ago that was meant to mean something?
Get The Eric’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Oh right, it wasn’t seven eight; it was six seven. Eek, numbers. Not that I’m afraid of them, but I wasn’t the strongest in handling mathematical studies in school.
All this time, I’m still scrolling down the free category of that danged Craigslist, and no other titles seemed to catch my fancy.
But, as I’m still on the search for something that’ll keep ya’ll entertained — which unfortunately morphed into anything — I now turn some attention towards the auto sales category of the site.
As I’m scrolling up and down the first page of entries, with the ‘for sale by owner’ box checked, I think I may have hit the jackpot — it’s a BMW suv going for under ten grand! In fact, it’s a Mechanic spesial!!
Just when I opened up the link this time ‘round, I kinda reverted back to my 15 year old self — the guy that used to hang out on internet relay chat and bully ‘newbies’, the guy that was an outright grammar nazi — make that grammar facist, and would spam various channels with all sorts of nonsense generated from various bot scripts.
Back in the day, when I was still in high school, I had a teacher that would always emphasize just how important it is to be accurate when using written language. Spelling matters. So too does punctuation and grammar. She always mentioned that any time we produce anything written in our native language, that the quality of the message is always going to reflect whether or not you’re intelligent.
And this is true! Ever see any professional advertisements laden with misspelled words, bad grammar, or any incorrect syntax usage? Nope! That’s because anyone running a business doesn’t want to be viewed upon as being unintelligent by those who read those things!
Leran to splel, !god.
And if you can’t, find a way to do so.
