Advertising and the Truth

The main goal of advertising is to grab people's attention and draw them in to what is being advertised. In order to do this, they use grammatically faulty language and other techniques. Tracy Pomerinke, the author of "Waaaaaasssssuuup With Advertising?" featured in the online issue "Writers Block," thinks that advertisements have a bad affect on society. The question is, does advertising dilute language as a whole, or is it an evaluation of language and a freedom of communication? I think that advertising should not be looked at as a reason for change in the language of society. Ads focus on grabbing the attention of viewers, not on the education of children and shouldn't be to blame for the evolution of language.

Advertisers focus only on grabbing the attention of viewers, not on the grammatical techniques in there ads. When a person is deluged with all types of ads, the ad industry focuses on the creativity of them. One way to be creative is to play around with grammar; such as the way Toyota did in their ad, "Toyota. Everyday" (Pomerinke 408). This ad caused controversy because of the word 'everyday.' To be grammatically correct, it would have to be two words, but this didn't look right to the company so they kept it all one word. This is an example of how advertisers are only focusing on the best way to grab societies attention. Advertisers want people to remember the message, talk about it, and repeat it so it can be remembered. The way they work to accomplish this is linked to the short and brief ads they make, causing some of them to be grammatically incorrect. Ads have little time so ad copy uses shortcuts; sentence fragments and colloquialism. All of these things companies do in order to advertise are geared towards getting the attention of the public eye, not focusing on the grammar of their message.

When thinking of an ad, it is important to make it appealing to the viewers, and some may find, like the grammarians, that "poor grammar in ads is a corruption of the language and teaching children the improper use of words"(Pomerinke 409). I do not think that this is the case. Why should they be responsible to reinforce the school's instruction? As a school has its job, so does an advertising company. Ads are objective and we, as consumers, should be taught not to take everything that is said in them seriously and know what not to believe. It is other institutions responsibility to provide knowledge on how to take advertisements and the societies responsibility to make sure they are educated enough to where they can apply what they know to the main message that the advertisement is saying. "A child watching Roadrunner outwit the Coyote is exposed to all sorts of physical law violations. In that sense, the cartoon certainly does not reinforce "correct" physics, and contradicts the principles that children learn in science"(Pomerinke 409). More children watch the television shows than the ads that are on in between shows. If children can watch a show on a regular basis, such as this one in the example and still learn the law of physics, then advertisements do not stop children