CHAPTER XX
ADVERTISEMENTS (concluded)
“Honesty is the best policy.”
Benjamin Franklin.
I. Assignment I
Pick out in a large advertisement for a breakfast food the number of words of one syllable other than prepositions or articles; the words of two syllables; of three syllables; of more than three syllables. Reduce your results to percentages.
Make a similar study of advertisements for a set of books, of chewing gum, of an automobile, and of a piece of machinery in some technical publication. Compare results with a similar count in a newspaper paragraph, an encyclopedia paragraph, and paragraphs from Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle, and Kipling.
II. Clearness
Clear, simple language, language that will be readily understood by the least intelligent of your possible customers, is an essential of good advertising. Every word that is above the lowest reasonable level of understanding limits the number of possible customers. The railroad attorney who was asked to write a notice that would warn people to be careful at railroad crossings did not dig into his law books for a polysyllabic sentence like this: “Whereas this is the intersection of a public highway with the right-of-way of the —— Railroad Corporation, each and every individual is hereby advised to exercise extreme caution.” He wrote a sentence which is a classic in its way “Stop! Look! Listen! Railroad Crossing.”
III. Assignment II
In the advertisements selected for Assignment I, count the number of words in each sentence and strike an average for each. Make a comparison with sentence length in other writings as suggested.