Monday, May 22, 2006

Soft on the nose, hard on the ellipse

Kleenex tissue might be nice on the nose, but the company's marketing copy is hard on the punctuation mark known as the ellipse.

They write:
Kleenex® Brand Ultra Soft tissue... perfect for your toughest colds, allergies... and everyday sneezes.

One uses the three-dot ellipse to show words that have been left out of a sentence. Its four-dot cousin fulls the same function, but at the end of the sentence.

While Kleenex® could make the case that the first ellipse replaces a dropped "is," the second one shows their copy-writers' complete lack of comma sense. Yes, the humble comma is the mark they should have used.

(An em-dash, meant to set off a strong interruption, might also have worked. But we think that's a stretch.)

In any case, 'snot pretty when multinational corporations don't hire proofreaders, is it?

P.S. Don't you like how SPOGG® has figured out how to mock brand-hypersensitivity?

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