A Word, Please: Admiration and helpful hints for salespeople

Once upon a time, in another life now recalled only in nightmares, I was a salesperson. My longest-held position (which I didn’t hold for long) required me to go door-to-door in office complexes trying to get companies to change their long-distance telephone service.

To say I was bad at it would be the understatement of the century. To say I would have been happier cleaning toilets at the local Taco Bell would not be an exaggeration.

Years later, I still harbor a twisted admiration for anyone who can sell anything to anyone. That’s why, when I see sales or advertising copy with grammar or punctuation errors, I’m extremely forgiving. I failed to master the sales and marketing people’s craft, so I shouldn’t be too hard on anyone who hasn’t mastered mine.

Not everyone sees it that way. Typos in advertisements draw some of the snarkiest comments imaginable. Even perceived errors like Apple’s “Think different” campaign (“different” was intended as an object of the verb, like “Think pink” or “Think results,” and not as an adverb modifying the verb) can draw snorts and scoffs for years on end.

So for all the salespeople, marketers and advertisers who are good at their jobs but not at mine, here’s how to avoid some of the most common and costly mistakes you’re probably making.

Here’s a simple guideline: Never use an apostrophe to form a plural unless it’s necessary for clarity. For example, if you’re writing an ad about DVRs, you don’t need an apostrophe before the S.

The possessive S can attach to initials the same way it attaches to a regular word (dog, dogs, house, houses). However, if your copy is in all capital letters, then it may not be clear that your S is there to form a possessive. It could be just another letter like D, V or R. So in this case, an apostrophe helps and is permitted: DVR’S.

One more mistake advertisers make with apostrophes: They let word-processing programs turn them into open single quotation marks. An apostrophe, if it curves at all, curves with its opening to the left, like a backward C.

Software programs often assume these are intended to be single quotation marks and so they incorrectly curve them the other way.

Here’s a fact almost no one in the advertising industry knows: “Till,” a synonym of “until,” takes two Ls and no apostrophe. Yes, you could make a contraction out of “until” by writing it with an apostrophe and single L: ‘til. But to people in the know, that’s code for “I wasn’t aware that ‘till’ is the preferred form.” And no, that didn’t evolve from misuse. The word “till” in the meaning “until” actually predates “until.”

Title case, in which the first letter of most words is capitalized, is a serious problem for most marketing and advertising writers. They try to emulate professional publishers by leaving some little words all lowercase, but they don’t know which words are the exception.

Perhaps the most common mistakes advertisers make is the misuse of “everyday.” The one-word form is exclusively an adjective and, therefore, works only when you’re modifying a noun: “We offer great everyday values.” If it’s not directly modifying a noun, it’s two words: “We offer great values every day.”

JUNE CASAGRANDE is author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at [email protected].