Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Copywriting moment.
The sentence I'm wrestling with ends thus:
"and will maintain the fast, high-quality production standards which it has become known for."


Except that I want it to say:
"and will maintain the fast, high-quality production standards for which it has become known."


But I still feel more comfortable with the first one, because more readers will be able to identify with it.  Do we sacrifice grammar for readability?  I'm going to side with Churchill:
"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."




Later the same morning, I found this lovely confusion:
"Charlie Acuff shined in the shadow of his famous cousin Roy by staying in the Knoxville area and becoming its best-loved old-time fiddler."


How old-timey was it?  Well, it was so old-timey we even employed verb constructions to show you!  Shouldn't it be "shone"?  And by the way, how does anyone shine in someone else's shadow?
*Face-palm...

1 comment:

  1. The sentence ending in a preposition doesn't bother me as much as the word "shined". I don't know why, but that irks me immensely.

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