Thursday, March 30, 2006

Structurize This!

Dear Infusium Marketing Team,

We are writing on behalf of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. SPOGG applauds your attempts to rid the world of frizzy, unmanageable hair, but SPOGG is, at the same time, concerned with some of the language in your marketing campaign.

You claim your product “corrects, restores and structurizes” hair. (The italics are ours.) As you rightly recognize that the English language does not yet correctize or restorize, it does not yet structurize either. It structures, just as Infusium — if it lives up to the language of your advertisements — structures limp or otherwise unruly hair.

It is not as though SPOGG is opposed to coining new words when clear and lively expression demands them. We like how Infusium makes it sound as though our hair will be infused with some space-age, frizz-taming magic. When our language already has words that perform the task at hand, however, we believe those are the words that should be used, instead of mutant offspring that sound, to our ears, like split ends might appear to your own eyes.

SPOGG is grateful for the time you took in reading this letter, and would feel a collective thrill if you would be so good as to correct your advertisement.

Sincerely yours,

SPOGG

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