Fritinancy

Crafting a Voice for RepairPal

For many of my clients I'm the namer-in-chief. For a few others I'm in charge of what's usually called "content"--I come up with ideas, do research and interviews, and write copy. For others I'm a ghostwriter of books or speeches. And for some clients I do something that falls somewhere in between: I create a vocabulary that becomes the client's verbal brand.

Verbal branding is what I did for RepairPal, the auto-maintenance site that launched last month. The site allows users to find and rate repair shops, get accurate and unbiased estimates for repairs, look up common repair problems and issues specific to their car's make and model, read about car parts and systems, and securely store repair records online.

My work for RepairPal began just before Christmas of 2007 with a proposal I submitted for "positioning the company, creating an effective and engaging corporate voice, bringing home and landing pages into focus, and establishing a verbal brand that can be extended into other parts of the website and other communications." This sort of work is hard to describe and (usually) even harder to sell. Fortunately, in RepairPal I had a smart and receptive client. CEO David Sturtz and his management team knew they needed an outsider's perspective to clarify, simplify, and "warmify" their content.¹ David's a self-professed car buff who knows a lot about how cars work; he took for granted many of the questions his less-sophisticated audience would have. He wanted a woman's perspective, too: for most of my six-month engagement, all of RepairPal's executives and technical advisers were men, but they expected most of the site's users to be women.

So my assignment was clear--and also vague. "Voice" and "tone" in writing are notoriously difficult to define. Here's what Jack Hitt says about them in a chapter titled "Voice" in his excellent book, A Writer's Coach:

Like a singer's, a writer's voice is an elusive thing, the sum of everything that goes into his or her style of written expression. A distinctive vocabulary might contribute to it. So might a preference for particular sentence forms or syntax. Or voice might emerge from even more subtle dimensions of writing. Unique angles of approach to subjects, maybe. Or a characteristic pace or degree of formality.

Later in the chapter, Hitt identifies some of the enemies of an authentic writing voice: pomposity, trendspeak, clichés (he provides a long list), private languages, and the "elegant variation" (a tortured effort to avoid repetition, as when a writer refers to Mickey Mouse as "the Disney rodent").

Hitt is addressing journalists and essayists, but we verbal branders face the same challenge--with the added twist that we're channeling (or inventing) a corporate personality that needs to be perceived as authentic and consistent.

The draft copy RepairPal showed me of the home page and main landing pages had predictable first-draft problems. Much of the language was stilted and formal. In striving for brevity, the team had sacrificed warmth, connection, and even essential information. The copy was sprinkled with MBA-isms like "metrics," "benchmarks," and "next steps." You could hear the effort that had gone into writing it. And this was for a website that needed to sound relaxed, confident, and friendly--like a repair pal.

(A note about the name: it had already been chosen and registered by the time I signed on. At my first meeting I mentioned my concerns about conflicts with PayPal--would customers think RepairPal was a subsidiary? Would PayPal sue?--and was told that trademark lawyers had already looked into those issues and given a green light.)

Many of my recommendations had to do with consistency: on the home page, each of the three "action" boxes now has a headline that starts with an imperative verb. Consistency leads to clarity, and clarity builds confidence. I also recommended using "you" and "your" as often as possible: strange as it seems, that direct connection with the user had been missing. I also came up with the home page's main headline, "We take the mystery out of auto repair!" We went through a lot of rounds on that single line. Should it be "mystery", "headache," or "guesswork"? Did we really need the exclamation point? (I said yes.) At one point the line was going to be "Take the despair out of auto repair," which has the cute rhyme and that touch of darkness I personally find appealing. But it was a tad too dark for many other folks.

I did a lot of work on the tagline, too. In the end, David Sturtz chose a line he'd been working on himself: Car Care Confidence. (For several weeks it was Confident Car Care, which I preferred. What do you think?)

Then there were all the brandable elements: What should we call the huge parts-and-service database, the estimating function, the record-storage section? And there were questions about whether certain terms--including car make--were too jargon-y for a general audience. I said most people--yes, even women--knew what make meant. The word went in. We went back and forth on such seemingly trivial points as whether the record-storage section (a nifty and valuable feature of the site) should be called MyCar or My Car. I said the closed-up version looked too artificial. The space went in.

It may seem mind-boggling that this sort of work can occupy six months, on and off, but the RepairPal guys, to their credit, take language very seriously. The site is still in beta, and I'm sure much will change. Still, I'm pleased that I could give RepairPal many of its first public words. Take the site for a test drive (sorry; couldn't resist) and let me know what you think. The really impressive section is the one for which I did no consulting at all: the auto repair encyclopedia. An army of auto experts shared their collective wisdom to create it (and a professional copyeditor helped smooth out the language). It's a beautiful thing.

Read what the press has been saying about RepairPal.

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¹ I discovered "warmify" on Picasa, the photo storage and editing site: it's one of the effects you can apply to your pictures. I've been using the word in other contexts ever since.

Randomonium

Stuff that's been rattling around in my brain:

"Moonlight in Vermont," written in 1943 by John Blackburn to music by Karl Suessdorf, may be the only popular song in English whose verses are all perfect haikus: five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. (The bridge breaks the pattern but maintains the impersonal mood and the rhymeless scheme.) Take a look:

Pennies in a stream / Falling leaves, a sycamore / Autumn in Vermont.

Gentle finger waves / Ski trails down a mountainside / Snowlight in Vermont.

Evening summer breeze / Warbling of a meadowlark / Moonlight in Vermont.

*

Two readers wrote separately about the peculiar way TypePad explains its comment-verification challenge:

This test is used to prevent automated robots from posting comments.

As if there's some other kind of robots.

*

There are scare quotes and shout quotes and 40-year-old quotation marks, and now, thanks to Go Fug Yourself, we have quotation marks of scorn.

*

I wanted to schedule a bulky-waste curbside pickup, so I dug out the Waste Management brochure to find the phone number. On the mailing-label side was this text:

Well worth the effort,

Clutter-Free

Your World!

"Clutter-free" is a verb? Or maybe Yoda-like this sentence is--a grammatical inversion that's meant to be read "Clutter-free: your world!" No, I didn't think so.

I'd have used "declutter" myself; it's a more clutter-free construction. But perhaps poor old Waste Management is just trying to sound like the cool kids, with their "thumb this up!" and their "stumble it!" and all the other quirky verbifications. (Hat tip to Mr. Verb for his defense of the latter two expressions. I'm OK with them, too, because they're really brand extensions. But "clutter-free this"? Nope.)

Simpsons Brand-o-Rama 2

Back for more fun with fictitious brands from The Simpsons! This year's edition includes brands spotted in The Simpsons Movie, which was released in July 2007 and is now available on DVD. I've also added some new categories: publishing, civic life, culture, industry, military, and sports and recreation. And I've expanded the transportation category; it's now called Travel and Lodging. Dates, when available, refer to original broadcast. Thanks to everyone who left suggestions and comments on the original post, and special thanks to linguist Heidi Harley, whose posts on Simpsons linguistic phenomena inspired this quixotic endeavor.

Food and Beverage

Sconewall Bakery (in Springfield's gay neighborhood; hat tip: Neal Whitman)

Dr. Hippie's Fungus Yums (what Lisa gives to Bart when he decides to give up meat; "Apocalypse Cow," 4/27/08)

Lobsterpolitan (what Homer gets when he asks bartender Moe for "the fanciest drink you got"; "Midnight Towboy," 10/7/07)

Tannen's Fatty Meats (in Springfield's Lower East Side)

Tomacco (Homer's tomato-tobacco hybrid, created when he fertilizes his tomato and tobacco fields with plutonium."E-I-E-I [Annoyed Grunt]," 11/7/99. Although Homer's production method was fictional, in 2003 a real farmer, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, successfully grafted a tomato plant onto the roots of a tobacco plant.)

Beef-O-Ghetti (made in Springfield's Little Italy)

Pepsi B ("for export only"; "Eight Misbehaving," 11/21/99; hat tip: Dave Blake)

The Clogger (new offering from Krusty burger; slogan: "If you can find a greasier burger, you're in Mexico"; The Simpsons Movie)

Fudd Beer (which made all those hillbillies go blind; "Colonel Homer," 3/26/92 (hat tip: Flick)

Chippos (hat tip: Pete K.)

Gorilla's Choice bananas (hat tip: George Cauldron)

Krusty O's Cereal ("Now with a free jagged metal O in every box!" Hat tip: James)

Restaurants and Bars

Live Free or Diner (in New Hampshire; "E Pluribus Wiggum," 1/6/08)

General Chang's Taco Italiano (on Fast Food Alley; "E Pluribus Wiggum")

Dead Lobster ("E Pluribus Wiggum")

Captain Corn Dog Schnitzel Palace ("E Pluribus Wiggum")

Chili Blasters ("E Pluribus Wiggum")

Vesuvius Pizza ("E Pluribus Wiggum")

Shez Parie

Bob's Big Poi Hawaiian restaurant ("Days of Wine and D'oh'ses," 4/9/00)

Taj Mah-All-You-Can-Eat ("Dial N for Nerder," 3/17/08)

Flaming Meaux ("Flaming Moe," 3/5/92. Hat tip: David Griner of AdFreak)

The Cloth Napkin

Texas Cheesecake Depository (hat tip: Darrin)

Uncle Moe's Family Feedbag ("...which narrowly escaped being named Chairman Moe's Magic Wok or Madman Moe's Pressure Cooker." Hat tip: Seymour Butz. Really, that's what he wrote.)

House of Pressed Fish

A Taste of Serbia

Mussolini & Frank's (parody of famous Hollywood hangout Musso & Frank Grill)

Have It Uruguay

The London Broil

Thai Food Factory ("formerly Petco")

Iraq E. Cheese (parody of Chuck E. Cheese)

Gulp 'n' Blow Drive-Through ("I Married Marge," 12/26/91)

The Zesty Fork (The Simpsons Movie)

Red Rash Inn (The Simpsons Movie)

Eski-Moe's (The Simpsons Movie)

Buffet the Hunger Slayer ("The Homer of Seville," 9/30/07)

T.G.I. Fried Eggs ("The Homer of Seville")

Griddler on the Roof ("The Homer of Seville")

Luftwaffles ("The Homer of Seville")

Tipsy McStagger's Good Time Drinking and Eating Emporium ("Flaming Moe," 3/5/92)

Bodacious Frittatas ("The Homer of Seville")

At the Mall (and on Main Street)

Tatters: Clothes for Orphans ("G.I. [Annoyed Grunt]", 11/12/06)

House of No Refunds ("G.I. [Annoyed Grunt]")

Electronics, Etc.

The Sole Provider (a shoe store whose manager is named, ahem, Mr. Friedman; "G.I. [Annoyed Grunt])

Snooze at 11 (mattress store; "Husbands and Knives," 11/18/07)

Mook Mart (convenience store in Guidopolis; "Midnight Towboy," 10/07/07)

Restoration Software ("Ice Cream of Margie [With the Light Blue Hair]," 11/26/06)

Crazy E.T.'s Phone Home (a blend of Crazy Eddie's and the movie E.T.; "Ice Cream of Margie," 11/26/06)

The Brushes Are Coming, The Brushes Are Coming ("Blood Feud," 7/11/91)

Boob Tubery (where Homer buys a satellite dish in "Bart vs. Lisa vs. 3rd Grade," 11/17/02)

Noiseland Arcade (The Simpsons Movie)

Dome Depot (The Simpsons Movie)

Try 'n' Save (hat tip: Jared)

Pay and Park and Pay (hat tip: Jared)

Stoner's Pot Palace kitchen store ("A Milhouse Divided," 12/1/96. Stoner Otto's reaction: "Man, that is flagrant false advertising!" Hat tip: Michael)

The Android's Dungeon (managed by Comic Book Guy; hat tip: KitteKaat)

Pool Sharks (motto: Where the Customer Is Our Chum! hat tip: commenter Joe)

Victor's Secret

Queen Victoria's Secret

Sprawl-Mart

Left-Mart (hat tip: Our Bold Hero)

Lackluster Video ("Catch 'Em If You Can," 4/25/05; also used in The Family Guy straight-to-DVD feature "Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story")

CostMo

Montgomery Warden

SHØP (IKEA parody)

Circuit Circus (sells Sometimes Ready and Never Ready batteries; "Funeral for a Fiend," 11/25/07)

Nuts Landing pet sterilization clinic ("Today I Am a Clown," 12/7/03)

A Bug's Death (exterminator)

Alternative Knifestyles (cutlery store in Springfield's "gayborhood"; "Three Gays of the Condo," 4/13/03; hat tip: Neal Whitman)

Fab Abs ("Three Gays of the Condo")

Monstromart (hat tip: tanyasingsdido)

Yiddle's Practical Jokes (first seen as Yiddle's Jokes; in Springfield's Lower East Side)

The hammock stores of Cypress Creek: Hammock Hut; Hammocks-R-Us; Put Your Butt There; Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Hat tip: TonyH)

 

Kid Stuff

Boys 'R' Us

Girltech Turbo Diary (what Lisa requests for her birthday on "The Dad Who Knew Too Little," 1/12/03)

Saks Fifth Grade

Krap-E-Latch baby seat ("Moe's Baby Blues," 5/18/03)

Death Kill City II: Death Kill Stories (video game that Bart plays with his therapist--voiced by Meg Ryan--in "Yokel Chords," 3/4/07)

J.R.R. Toykins (toy store in Springfield Mall)

Adults Only

Maison Derriere ("Are they talkin' about the bordello?" "No, the burlesque house!"; "Bart After Dark," 11/24/96; episode features the song "We Put the Spring in Springfield." Hat tip: Seymour Butz)

Sh*tKickers (which Marge pronounces "Shotkickers"; the cowboy bar she goes to in "Marge on the Lam," 11/4/93. Hat tip: Stephen Ockham)

Entertainment

The Opal Show (whose hostess, Opal--an Oprah Winfrey parody--has a boyfriend named Straightman)

The Palm Springfield Report

Ruffintumble's Fun Zone

Rancho Relaxo (just outside Springfield)

"One Guy Named Moe" (show in Springfield's Theater District)

Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick in $$$ (show in Springfield's Theater District)

"Stab-A-Lot: The Itchy & Scratchy Musical" (show in Springfield's Theater District)

Itchy & Scratchy Land (slogan: Built by Imagination and Non-Union Labor; subdivided into Torture Land, Explosion Land, Searing Gas Pain Land, Unnecessary Surgery Land; attractions include The Head Basher, The Mangler, The Blood Bath, Tavern on the Scream, The Log Fall, The Baby Ball Pit, and "Laramie Cigarettes Presents the I&S Mine Field)

Bloodbath Gulch Ghost Town (founded by prostitutes in 1849; attractions include Bob's Brothel, Ed's Brothel, Chuck's Brothel, Tom's Brothel, Buck's Brothel, and Ye Olde Animatronic Saloon; "Kidney Trouble," 5/26/02)

Sports and Recreation

Little Pwagmattasquarmsettport (location of Ned Flanders's beach house; "Summer of 4 Ft. 2," 5/19/96)

Camp See-a-Tree (the camp for underprivileged boys where Homer originally met Lenny;"The Way We Weren't," 5/5/04)

Springy (failed mascot of Springfield's failed Olympic bid; "The Old Man and the 'C' Student," 8/12/01)

Springfield Isotopes (baseball team)

Springfield Atoms (football team)

Springfield Gravelarium (pro wrestling)

Association of Springfield Semi-Pro Boxers (ASSBOX) ("The Homer They Fall," 11/10/96)

The Grateful Gelding stables

Hell's Satans motorcycle club

Culture

Chazz Busby Dance Academy (motto: No Fat Chicks) ("Blame It on Lisa," 3/31/02?)

Opera Academy (motto: No Thin Chicks) ("Blame It on Lisa")

Wordloaf (writers' conference in Vermont; parody of Bread Loaf; "Moe 'N'a Lisa," 11/19/06)

The Jazz Hole (hat tip: Wishydig)

Larry's Chinese Theatre (parody of Grauman's/Mann's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood)

Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific Arena (named after a real hair-care brand sold in the 1970s and 1980s--now back by popular demand!)

Louvre: American Style (art gallery whose owner, "Astrid," is voiced by Isabella Rosselini; "Mom & Pop Art," 4/11/99)

Museum of Sadness and Oppression ("The Dad Who Knew Too Little," 1/12/03)

Museum of Suffering

Homer's Museum of Hollywood Jerks ("When You Dish Upon a Star," 11/8/98)

Springfield Museum (motto: Truth, Knowledge, Gift Shop)

Springsonian Museum (motto: Where the Elite Meet Magritte)

Museum of Sand Paper

Museum of Barnyard Oddities

Museum of Crime (featuring the hippie pot-party exhibit; "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson," 5/18/97)

Industry

Abbatoir & Costello slaughterhouse (motto Where Cows Go from Moo to You; "Apocalypse Cow," 4/27/08)

Burns Construction (motto: Building Cheaply, Charging Dearly;  11/26/06)

Motherloving Sweets and Sugar Company ("Sweet and Sour Marge," 1/20/02)

Southern Cracker (tagline: The Dryyyyyy Cracker; ...)

Groovy Grove Juice Corp. ("D'oh-in' in the Wind," 11/15/98)

Burnsodyne (tagline: The Profit People). Burnsodyne subsidiaries include Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Little Lisa Recycling Plant, Monty Burns Casino, and Burns Construction Co. (tagline: Building a Better Tomorrow, for Him)

International Brotherhood of Jazz Dancers, Pastry Chefs, and Nuclear Technicians Local 643 ("Last Exit to Springfield," 3/11/93)

Publishing

Fretful Mother magazine (hat tip: Karl Weber)

Angelica Button and the Teacup of Terror (Harry Potter parody; "Smoke on the Daughter," 3/30/08)

Angelica Button and the Deadly Denouement

Angelica Button and the Dragon King's Trundle Bed

The Harpooned Heart (romance novel written by Marge; "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife," 1/25/04)

How to Seduce Your Lousy, Lazy Husband

Will There Ever Be a Rainbow? (Montgomery Burns's autobiography; "Blood Feud," 7/11/91)

Who Wants to Be a Brazillionaire? (book Marge reads on the flight to Brazil; "Blame It on Lisa," 3/31/02)

Military

Operation Enduring Occupation (parody of Occupation Enduring Freedom; in "The Day the Earth Looked Stupid" segment of Treehouse of Horror XVII, 11/5/06, aliens Kang and Kodos wonder why they aren't greeted as liberators)

Fort Clinton ("not that Clinton") ("G.I. [Annoyed Grunt]," 11/12/06)

Fort Fragg ("Brother's Little Helper," 3/5/00)

Fort Springfield (motto: Proud Home of Secret Civilian Mail Opening Project) "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song," 4/27/94)

Civic Life

Springfield town motto: "A Noble Spirit Embiggens the Smallest Man"

State motto: "Not Just Another State"

Little Newark (Springfield neighborhood)

Crackton (Springfield neighborhood)

Tibet Town (Springfield neighborhood)

Ethnictown ("Where hardworking immigrants dream of becoming lazy overfed Americans")

Springfield Tire Yard ("25 Years and Still Burning Strong")

Dalai Lama Expressway

Dead Weasel Road

Michael Jackson Expressway

Warren Harding Memorial Throughhole

XYZ Street (where Homer enters the third dimension in "Homer³," an episode of "Treehouse of Horror VI," 10/29/95)

League of Uninformed Voters ("Sideshow Bob Roberts," 10/9/94)

"Corruptus in extremis" (motto of mayor's office)

"Liberty and justice for most" (courthouse motto)

Health and Beauty

Ferris Bueller's Day of Beauty Salon ("He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs," 11/26/06)

Viagrogaine (the topical rub for bald, impotent men; "Barting Over," 2/16/03)

Stagnant Springs Spa ("The Great Louse Detective," 12/15/03)

Shapes, a Gym for Women (parody of Curves; "Husbands and Knives," 11/18/07)

Lucky Lindy's Hair Pomade (tagline: You'll never fly solo again! Used by Grandpa Abe. Hat tip: Dene.)

Focusin (a drug for attention-deficit disorder; hat tip: Christian)

Dimoxinil (hair-growth tonic; hat tip: Jon)

John Ford Center for Alcoholic Cowboys

 

Travel and Lodging

Crazy Clown Airlines ("Fear of Flying," 12/18/94)

Springfield Airfield ("birthplace of wind shear")

Springfield Travel (agency slogan: "Now Get Outta Here!")

Buck-U-Bus Line ("Half-Decent Proposal," 2/10/02)

Worst Western motel ("Ask about our sheet rental") (The Day the Violence Died," 3/17/96)

Hotel Pillowmint (where The Who stayed) ("A Tale of Two Springfields," 11/5/00)

Ye Olde Off-Ramp Inn (slogan: We're Now Rat Free) ("Some Enchanted Evening," date tk)

Aphrodite Inn (fantasy room and conference center; includes Camelot Room, Safari Room, Arabian Nights Room, Pharoah's Chamber, Caveman Room, Utility Room)

Sleep-Eazy Motel (some letters are burned out so that the sign reads "Sleazy Motel"; "The Cartridge Family," hat tip: Julia)

Real Estate

Pressboard Estates

Recluse Ranch Estates

 

Education

Springwarts School of Magic ("Wiz Kids" segment of "Treehouse of Horror XII," 11/6/01)

Spellzapoppin' (the school play in "Wiz Kids")

Springfield Christian School (motto: We Put the Fun in Fundamentalist Dogma)

Bovine University

Little Ludwig's Music School

Eastside Ruff-Form School (canine obedience school in "Bart's Dog Gets an F," 3/7/91)

Professor Von Bowser's Sanitarium For Dogs

St. Sebastian's School for Wicked Girls ("Bart's Friend Falls in Love," 5/7/92)

Swigmore University (where Moe studied bartending; "Homer the Moe," 11/18/01)

Homer Simpson Showboating Academy

Branded

Dear Jane Sample, who blogs anonymously from Canada about "what it's really like to work in advertising," asks:

Have you ever thought about how many brands you use in a typical day? Well I did and created a visual representation of my Typical Friday in Brands.

Check out Jane's logo-filled brand timeline here. The post went globally viral ("bubonic" is how one commenter put it) in just a couple of days. And now another blogger, Manhattan Offender, is posting a brand timeline in real time.

What does your branded day look like? 

May Linkfest

Lots o' links this month, so make yourself comfortable.

Haikuvies: Tell a movie's plot/In seventeen syllables/Spoilers? Sure--why not? (Actually, you get 17 times seven.)

It took about 24 hours for a meme called When Obama Wins to make the leap from Twitter to the whole wide web. Gather round, children, and hear Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path tell the origin story:

I'm never sure about how internet memes start, but this one started with a typo.

Dan was twittering something about Alabama, but wrote "Alambama". He joked that when Barack Obama wins the election, certain states will probably be renamed Alobama, Califobama, Nevama, Massabama, New Yobama. Of course, I thought that was hilarious and started thinking about other things that would change once Obama wins. So, a few of us started twittering silly little things, thinking of it as an inside joke.

Overnight, a few people caught on giving it a life of its own.

Jason Kottke took this and mashed it up to create this really cool microsite.

I think what interests me the most about these is how fast they spread. It's been less than 24 hours and there are already over 500 tweets about it. Certainly taken on a life of it's own.

Which is the perfect segue to my favorite WOW so far: "When Obama wins ... everyone will know the difference between its and it's." (By 111archeravenue.)

I considered saving this for Halloween, but death is always in season at Fatal Utterances, "a glossary of slang, jargon, euphemism, and cant as used by undertakers, criminals, consumer activists, and the ordinary people." Some favorite entries: bier baron (a funeral-parlor owner), Mrs. Z (a corpse), and Stare Number 12 ("the look that passes over a man's face as he regards another man as a meal").

The idea behind Brand Tags is that a brand is whatever people say it is. Go there and give your one-word impressions of brands like Gap, Starbucks, Yahoo, Greenpeace, Whole Foods, and many more. (It's all over Twitter now, but I heard it first from Rowland Hobbs, whose tags I follow on Del.icio.us.)

The Big Word Project is selling words at $1 a letter. "Search for your word and link it to your website. Your website is then the new definition." Started by a couple of graduate students in Northern Ireland.

You probably know about Stuff White People Like, which reportedly is being turned into a book. (What do white people like? Coffee, Asian girls, Ivy League schools--stuff like that.) Now Andrew Hammel, an American in Germany, offers Stuff White Germans Like: #3 Balkan disco music, #5 custom-designed bookshelves, #11 Paul Auster. (Really? Paul Auster?)

Roy Peter Clark is serializing his next book, The Glamour of Grammar, on his Poynter Online blog (Poynter's slogan: "Everything You Need to Be a Better Journalist"). He's inviting readers to make suggestions and correct errors. His goal is to present "not a comprehensive grammar, but an essential grammar: those elements of language that the reader and writer can use today and every day." Even if you groan at the mention of grammar, read this series: it's lively and engaging and wildly informative. (Yes, glamour of grammar. You knew the two words were related, didn't you? Roy explains in his first installment)

Mike Pope on the seven stages of being edited:

3) Anger

I'm starting to get irritated. What the -- ? That's a stupid edit. And so's that one. Ha! That's just wrong! Smartypants editors, think they know everything! Well, let me just set that editor straight ...

And speaking of anger, here's the Baltimore Sun's John McIntyre on "Those Damn Copy Editors," in which he addresses the complaint of "someone named Seth Godin"¹ that a copy editor "totally wrecked" his work:

Unfortunately, Mr. Godin does not supply a single instance of the copy editor's destructiveness, so it is up for discussion whether he is an injured author or a fulminating boor. (The other texts at his blog do not suggest that revision of his prose would be a cultural catastrophe.)

Catching his breath, McIntyre offers some very sensible suggestions for improving relations between writers and copy editors.

___

¹ Guru Supremo of hip marketing manifestos and, according to one of McIntyre's commenters, "author of the most popular ebook ever."

The New Old Thing

Brim coffee, Salon Solutions hair products, Eagle snack foods, Nuprin pain reliever: they're gone but not forgotten, writes Rob Walker in "Can a Dead Brand Live Again?" in the May 18 New York Times Sunday magazine. Dropped by their parent companies, some of these "ghost brands" have been acquired by River West Brands, a small Chicago company specializing in "brand reanimation." River West's approach is interesting for two reasons, Walker writes:

One is that for the most part the equity — the idea — is the only thing the company is interested in owning. River West acquires brands when the products themselves are dead, not merely ailing. Aside from Brim, the brands it acquired in the last few years include Underalls, Salon Selectives, Nuprin and the game maker Coleco, among others. “In most cases we’re dealing with a brand that only exists as intellectual property,” says Paul Earle, River West’s founder. “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.”

The other interesting thing is that when Earle talks about consumer memory, he is factoring in something curious: the faultiness of consumer memory. There is opportunity, he says, not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember.

The best example of a reanimated brand is probably the Volkswagen Beetle, which maintains the name but not the form of the original. (The contemporary design suggests the old version without slavishly imitating it.) "The reintroduced Beetle layered 'nostalgic reassurance' over modern functionality," writes Walker. The nostalgia is front and center in the current ad campaign, which pairs a talking "classic" Beetle (with a comic German accent) with its sleeker, silent update or with contemporary celebrities. (Watch a spot with Herr Beetle and Napster's Sean Fanning here.)

You may be familiar with Walker's writing from the Consumed column in the Times magazine and from his blog, Murketing, which examines brands and anti-brands. I'm looking forward to reading his new book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, which will be released June 3.

News to Me

Jeep makes baby strollers? Well, Jeep licenses its name to baby strollers. And yes, there are Wrangler and Cherokee subbrands. I did a double-take when I saw my first li'l Jeepster this week, but my third take was: huh, makes sense. "Jeep" has always sounded like baby talk. Now, Jeep pet strollers are something else again.

Remember Alex, the African gray parrot who apparently was capable of learning referential speech? (He died last September at about age 30.) I did, but I hadn't known that Alex's name was an acronym for Avian Learning Experiment. I learned that and much more of interest in "Birdbrain," by Margaret Talbot, in the May 12 issue of The New Yorker. For example, Alex "sometimes played with the sounds he had learned, venturing new words. ... When Alex developed nonsense words--like 'cheenut'--[cognitive scientist Irene] Pepperberg and his other trainers did not respond, and he quickly stopped saying them." Elsewhere in the article, Talbot mentions Nim Chimpsky (1973-2000), a chimpanzee who was taught sign language. His name was a sly reference to the linguist Noam Chomsky, who has famously argued that only humans are capable of language.   

The trademarked treat known as the Popsicle was invented in 1905 by an 11-year-boy right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, an irony as close to "selling ice to the Eskimos" as you can get. (Mark Twain may or may not have said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco," but the truth of the assertion cannot be denied.) Indeed, the "Epsicle," as young Frank Epperson dubbed his invention--a blend of Epperson and icicle--was created when Frank left a mixture of powdered soda and water on his porch (with a stirrer in it) on a night of record low temperatures in either San Francisco or Oakland (accounts vary). It took him 17 years to introduce it to the public--at the Neptune Beach amusement park in Alameda--and another two years to apply for a patent for his "frozen confectionery." By then he'd renamed it the Popsicle, allegedly because his children called it "Pop's 'icle." Today the Popsicle trademark and brand are owned by Ice Cream USA, a division of Unilever. I learned some of this from a soon-to-be-published book by Krystina Castella, Pops!: Icy Treats for Everyone, which contains recipes for confections Frank Epperson probably never dreamed of, such as Sweet Martini Pops.

I just found out that Dan Piraro, creator of one of my favorite comics, Bizarro, has a blog. Sometimes he explains his jokes, miraculously without making them any less funny. Many of the jokes involve wordplay and semantic twists. Here's a Bizarro from last month:

Piraro says he rarely publishes captionless cartoons:

Call me wordy, verbose, circumlocutory, long-winded, loquacious, garrulous, periphrastic, prolix, or just a guy who can't shut up, but any way you slice it, it's a happy day in Cartoonland when I publish a captionless cartoon.

Mr.-y Spot

I've been collecting photos of "Mr." brand names for more than a decade. (Not names like "Mr. Brown's Restaurant"; the formula has to be Mr.+ Product or Mr. + Service.) I was inspired to begin the project when a friend pointed out a Chinese restaurant on San Pablo Ave. in Berkeley called Mr. Eggroll. The "O" in "Eggroll" had fallen off, and all the remaining letters appeared to have been handcut from white sticky tape, but still--you had to admire that plucky honorific and applaud the attempt at dignity. (Both the friend and the business are now defunct, alas.)

I went on to document Mr. Lumpia X (a take-out place in San Francisco specializing in the Filipino specialty called lumpia; I have no idea what the "X" stood for), Mr. Hot Dog Rancho Burgers (confusing, yes, but a very handsome sign: Geary Blvd., San Francisco), Mr. Convenience (a Japanese store on Mason St. in San Francisco; "Mr. Convenience" was the only English in the sign), Mr. Sushi (Grand Ave., Oakland), and the unabbreviated Mister Softee, the ice-cream-truck franchise in New York and the Northeast.¹ Except for Mister Softee, none of these businesses appears to have survived. All of the photos are from my pre-digital period and thus unavailable for posting; one of these days I'll have them scanned.

Meanwhile, here are some current examples of Mr. monikers.

I shot this San Francisco establishment in 2005. But this photo, from the Yelp review, gives more context:

There's a #1 in the sign because there's also a #2 store, in Hayward. And the bling-bling in question is the kind you have installed in your mouth. As one satisfied customer put it on Yelp: "Listen, at some point in your life you may need to buy some gold teeth, and when you do, Mr. Bling Bling will be waiting like a prodigal friend. Seriously, this is the place."

On Fairfax Ave. near Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles:

   

Quite the dapper gent, eh? He's not to be confused, of course, with Mr. Clean®, a registered trademark of Procter & Gamble:

This Mr. is also in Los Angeles, on Santa Monica Blvd. near Western Ave.:

A coffee wholesaler in downtown Oakland, near Jack London Square:

I love that snazzy streamlined font. However, the company's logo on its web site is completely different. Time to hire a sign painter?

 

On University Ave. in Berkeley. Another fine retro typeface. I'm indebted to one of the Messrs. Rooter for his heroic efforts in removing a small forest from my sewage system a few months ago.

Anybody out there have a favorite Mister?

___

¹ "Mister Softee" is also stockbroker slang for Microsoft, whose ticker symbol is MSFT.

Names in the News: Fashion Week Edition

Stupa: I've written previously about mystifying shoe names and descriptive copy. Now behold the Arche Stupa in ambre nubuck (photo on the left) and consider a name that is both mystifying and, well, stupid. A stupa (Sanskrit for "heap") is a mound containing the relics of a Buddha or a saint. In other words, it's a tomb. With sacred overtones. So we've got a death association and a sacrilegious connotation and--at least to speakers of English, Spanish, and Italian--a "stupid" soundalike. Three strikes. Arche shoes in general are beautifully crafted (in France) and very comfortable, and the Stupa is nice enough to look at, but, given the bad name, I can't say I'm surprised that it's currently on sale for almost half its original price. By the way, what is up with Arche calling the material of its soles "milk-fed Havea rubber"? First of all, the Latin name of the rubber tree is Hevea brasiliensis, not "Havea." And no matter how much milk you "feed" it, nothing magical will happen. It's the sap that's milky, not the fertilizer.

YOOX: They sell some top-drawer discounted designer duds at YOOX: Donna Karan, Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Alexander McQueen, Prada. And they probably have a few yuks around the water cooler. But that doesn't save "YOOX" from being one of the silliest, ugliest names in fashion history. At least it wasn't randomly selected, according to the (God help us) DNA page:

The name itself reveals the personality of YOOX.COM: Y and X, the male and female chromosomes, flank the ‘zero’ from the binary code, the fundamental language of the digital age.

So logical! And yet so dumb!

YOOX is headquartered in Bologna, and the names of its "team" members (no CEO or president in evidence) are largely Italian, so I'm wondering whether "YOOX" sounds hip or American or something to people named Paolo and Giancarlo and Valentina. A certain distance from English fluency, and indeed from reality itself, might account for prose like this:

Once inside YOOX.COM you experience the alchemy of a creative cyberspace, where technology meets women and men to explore a new concept of entertainment via shopping. 

Theality: Speaking of alternate realities, take a look at this brand's landing page on Zappos (the manufacturer's About Us copy is slightly different):

Theality was conceived in 2005 to meet the needs of fashionable pregnant women and it is unlike any other maternity clothes on the market. With unique designs, high quality stretch fabrics, and detail-oriented embellishments, theality has leaped to the forefront of maternity fashion.

The word "theality" is the fusion of the words "theory" and "reality", which is the philosophy behind the line. Theality clothing is the fusion of what designers are showing on the runway and making it the reality for the pregnant woman.

Theality clothing is a must for any pregnant woman who is concerned with comfort as well as maintaining her sense of style. With the strong belief that moo-moos [sic!] and unflattering prints should be universally banned from maternity fashion, theality has designed a line of clothing that begs the question, "What's your theality?"

Where to begin with this? Let's just leap to the forefront. For starters, some words--like "theory" and "reality"--just shouldn't be blended. The sense of neither word is retained, and the resulting blend is confusing. I saw it as "The Ality" (what's an Ality?); others may try to pronounce it as "theel-tee." Second, there's already a successful Theory fashion brand. Third, the Theality logo (which I've been unable to reproduce here) for no apparent reason highlights the "e," the "a," and the "i." My brain's been on infinite loop trying to crack that code.

Then there's the copy, which is painful when it isn't laughable; I suspect it was written by a non-native English speaker and never copyedited or proofread. A few of the lowlights:

• "It is unlike any maternity clothes on the market." Clumsy and ungrammatical. And the use of "and" to connect the two clauses in that sentence is a dead giveaway of an amateur writer.
• "A fusion of the words 'theory' and 'reality,' which is the philosophy behind the line." How can "a fusion of the words" be "a philosophy"?
• "And making it the reality for the pregnant woman." Awkward.
• FYI, the Hawaiian garment is a muu-muu, not a "moo-moo."
• "...begs the question, 'What's your theality?'" Everyone gets "begs the question" wrong, but that's no excuse to use it here to mean "asks the question." And the question being asked is a pointless one.

Bonus bad-name link: Read about Acne Jeans at Beauty Marks.

More Gumption

Last week I wrote about finding a very old tin of Gumption "oven supercleanser" in my parents' pantry. Since then I've managed to catch up on several weeks' worth of postings at The Word Detective, the excellent website about words and language, and I've discovered an April 11 entry about "gumption," the noun. It's a funny word that appears to blend an Anglo-Saxon prefix with a Latin suffix. Except that it doesn't. And its meaning has been slippery, too. A reader queried:

Dear Word Detective: When I was growing up in Yorkshire, in the 1940s, “gumption” was commonly understood to mean “common sense,” or “street smarts.” I have since moved to Canada, where “gumption” seems to be a synonym for “courage” or “nerve.” I would be interested to see how this word could have acquired two such different meanings among people of the same basic heritage.

To which TWD's Evan Morris replied, after a characteristically amusing warmup:

The difference in the meaning of “gumption” between Yorkshire in the 1940s and Canada today is more a result of time passing than of your move to a new continent. The word “gumption” itself first appeared in English dialects in the early 18th century, imported from Scots, where it meant “common sense” or “shrewdness.” The roots of “gumption” are uncertain, but it may well be connected to the Middle English “gome,” (in Scots, “gaum”) meaning “attention or notice,” perhaps based on the Old Norse “gaumr.”

"Gome" survives in one other current locution that's more familiar to speakers of British English than to Americans: "gormless," meaning "clueless, emptyheaded, and hopelessly dense" (citing Morris again).

Morris doesn't mention a few other "gump" associations. The Gump is "an elk-like creature with caprine whiskers" in L. Frank Baum's Oz books. There's an adjective, "gumptious"--"clever, vain, self-important"--that combines the meanings of "gumption" and "bumptious." The comic strip titled "The Gumps" ran in American newspapers from 1917 to 1959; the eponymous family got its name from the Chicago Tribune publisher's word for "the masses."

Gump's in San Francisco, established in 1861 by brothers Solomon and Gustave Gump, originally from Heidelberg, claims to be the oldest continuously operating gallery in Northern California. It specializes in Asian art and craft. It's also a very elegant retail store; countless San Francisco brides have registered for china and silver there.

I remember hearing that Winston Groom, author of the book that became the movie Forrest Gump, was inspired by the San Francisco Gump's when he named his title character. But I haven't been able to confirm that story.