One word to ruin them all
Noticed the following job posting online and thought one word was out of place. The company’s name has been changed to “BrandCo” to protect the innocent.
Imagine working for a company that allows you the opportunity to reach your potential. Somewhere you can have an impact, as part of an international team. Think about being part of a company whose relationships, both with their clients and their people, are of critical importance. A place that can provide excellent training in a stimulating environment with real responsibility from day one.
Then consider BrandCo, one of the world’s leading authorities on advertising, marketing communications and brand equity research.
Then consider? I wasn’t all that excited by “Imagine working for a company that allows you to reach your potential” anyway, but “Then consider…” implies that BrandCo is not that company. I’m guessing it was originally formulated as “If you want to work for a company…then consider BrandCo…” but somewhere along the line it got edited and no one realized that it now looks like “[First] imagine a company…then [instead] consider BrandCo.”
If you’re going to add a bunch of romantic “why you’ll love it here” copy before a job post, then you should at least make sure it’s well written. First write it, then proofread it.
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Another takeaway from this syntactically insightful piece is that the fearless author is scanning the Help Wanteds and his formidable talents may be in play… 
@Paul: Thanks for the “formidable.” Just doing competitive research, of course.
By the way, my Dad (the family grammar expert) argues that “Imagine…Then…” could be interpreted as “First think of all the things you want in a company, then look at our company and check that indeed it fulfills your desires.” In other words, instead of “[First] imagine a company…then [instead] consider BrandCo,” “[First] imagine a company…then [next] consider BrandCo.”
I still think it could’ve been a lot more clear…
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I wake up some days reading hack like this — from “communications” firms — and wonder if we’ve fallen into a mirror wasteland of devolution and ANTI-KNOWLEDGE — where communication basics have been inverted and distorted into bizarro nonsense. Remember the Star Trek episode where Sulu is running shirtless through the ship waving a sword and Spock is sporting a goatee and hitting on Uhura? Well, in our very real ANTI-KNOWLEDGE waste-world, Strunk and White, et al are speaking in wierd gibberish and undecipherable syntaxes..
The mere fact that (many, thoiugh not all) humans have the ability to speak, write and share ideas has somehow been conflated with a wierd universal ‘expertise’ in doing so. It scsres me.
Does my ability to cut a steak convince these same people that I’m perfectly suited to perform abdominal surgery? Because I can use scissors, can I also cut your hair?
Perhaps it’s like this: In Theodore Reik’s book The Compulsion to Confess, the psychologist argued that neurotic symptoms such as blushing and stuttering can be seen as unconscious confessions that express the patient’s repressed impulses while also punishing the patient for communicating these impulses. He further explored this theme in The Unknown Murderer, in which he argued that because of unconscious guilt, criminals often leave clues that can lead to their identification and arrest.
Perhaps these unsubtle clues of communication incompetence are really signs of similar neurotic tendencies, warning the professional communicator: RUN! YOUR EXPERTISE WON’T BE APPRECIATED (OR EVEN UNDERSTOOD) HERE!