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.

Introducing noir55

noir55 is a new, “hidden” category of Semantic Argument that combines two things I like: hardboiled crime fiction (private detectives, crime, murder, Hammett, Chandler, Black Mask, etc.) and extremely short stories. The idea came to me after I realized an inordinate number of my entries into the New Times 55 Fiction contest fit this theme.

I’ll post things I’ve written as well as anything relevant that I can get another author’s permission to publish. As it has almost no relevance to the rest of Semantic Argument, the posts won’t show up on the homepage, but will always be accessible from the category dropdown on the right. Eventually it could be its own blog, but that seemed like a bit too much trouble at this point.

Two formats that seemed easy to tackle are the 55 Fiction format and Twitter’s 140 character limitation. Each story will be posted with title and either “(55)” or “(140)” to indicate which format’s been followed. A new Twitter account, @noir55, has been set up for the shorter stories.

Send me a story and I’ll post it here.

55 Fiction is back

My favorite writing competition has returned, and submissions are due by June 14. I’ve already sent in a handful (with leftovers from my 2002ish submissions). I’ve written about this competition before, and have included it as an example in multiple posts about the joys (and effectiveness) of constrained creativity. So this time I’ll just provide a link to the rules and a new example.

Keep Some Distance

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Semantic ambiguity in post-rationalization

I know it’s unfair for me to pick on a book based on a one-paragraph summary, but I was perusing the Ries & Ries site and noticed these sentences describing Al Ries’s Focus.

How do you build a brand? You narrow the focus. Nokia narrowed its focus to cellphones and became the world’s No. 1 cellphone brand. Federal Express narrowed its focus to overnight deliveries and became one of the world’s leading cargo carriers. Southwest narrowed its focus to coach service only and became America’s most profitable airline. Dell narrowed its focus to direct sales only and became the world’s leading PC manufacturer.

Let’s examine the examples of “focus” Ries provides here:

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Is “cannot” a word or a contraction?

A friend recently sent me a site listing common errors in English usage, and I’ve been looking for a relevant way of bringing it up on this site. I’ve had some fun clicking around on it.

• First, there’s the satisfaction of seeing some of my pet peeves corrected—nice to know someone shares my frustration at least. “ATM machine” and “I/me/myself” are good examples.
• Then there’s the entertainment factor—the supposedly common mistakes that I wasn’t even aware people were making. “Virii?” ”Disconcerning?”
• And lastly,

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Our gym isn’t so much clean as it is “clean”

Couldn’t finish the year out without one more photo of unnecessary quotation marks.

It really is a nice thought. It just doesn’t need to be between quotation marks.