Fritinancy

Those Does, Revisited

Lawrence Yang, "information architecture nerd by day, art nerd by night," read my post on the Droid phone's "bucket of does" and decided to illustrate it. The result is exactly what I would have created if I had art skillz. Go take a look.

Want to Write Better? Read This Book.

First, a confession: I'm not a big fan of business-writing books. It's not that I know it all: I don't. But most of the business-writing guides I've read are too elementary, redundant, or insipid to be of interest to me or anyone I know.

This week, however, I learned about a shining exception: 30 Days to Better Business Writing, by Matthew Stibbe, a British marketing writer who blogs at Bad Language. Not only is it smart, clear, and even funny (!), it's free.

You read that right. Matthew is giving away all this invaluable information as a free e-book.

Go read it. Then come back here and let me tell you why I think 30 Days to Better Business Writing is so terrific.

The Annunciation

I got a flu shot at Kaiser last month and noticed this sign in a hallway:

I couldn't remember previously seeing an "Annunciator" anywhere. I assumed it was a brand name like the fondly remembered Ticket Spitter. But no: it's a generic term. Merriam-Webster says an "annunciator" is "a usually electrically controlled signal board or indicator."

Still, can you blame me for expecting to hear a chorus of hosannas?

Botticelli, The Cestello Annunciation, 1489-1490

D'oe!

The new Google/Verizon mobile device, the Droid, went on sale over the weekend, supported by a $100 million ad campaign. Here's what the wrap on my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle looked like:

A bucket of does?

My first reaction: Is KFC deep-frying Bambi's mom?

A couple of does, unbucketed.

Only the tagline, buried at the bottom of the ad, solves the riddle: "In a world of doesn't, Droid does."

What we have here, folks, is anthimeria gone bad: a verb (third-person, present-tense to do) treated as a noun. And because said verb ends in an S and is spelled exactly the same as a real noun, we end up in a bucketful of don't go there.

Droid (the name is a truncation of Google's Android operating system) is taking a dark, sci-fi approach in its marketing. According to The Business Insider, the target market of the campaign "is the tech-savvy, early adopter young male in his 20s or 30s who cares more about functionality and productivity, and tends to eschew certain lifestyle brands that attract herds of followers." It's the antithesis of chirpy iPhone positioning:  early Droid ads attacked the iPhone as "iDon't."

New TV spots began airing tonight. After watching this "stealth" preview...

...I wondered whether the Droid should be renamed the Dread.

The integrated campaign—the largest in Verizon's history— was executed by McGarryBowen, New York.

Doe photo: Wild About Pets.

Word of the Week: Charticle

Charticle: A bite-size combination of text, images, and graphics that in some newspapers takes the place of a full article. A portmanteau of chart and article. Pioneered by the print version of USA Today. Also known as "infographic."

From "Charticle Fever," American Journalism Review, October/November 2008:

For decades, news organizations have been seeking ways to stem the steady decline of newspaper circulation and woo those elusive 18-to-35 year-olds who are likely to get their news free on the Internet. Well, here's an equation that editors and designers in newsrooms ranging from small dailies in Oregon to major metros in Florida are increasingly turning to: Chart + article = charticle. (Think Brad + Angelina = Brangelina, but not nearly as hot and quite a bit geekier.)

Barry Popik, who writes about historical and contemporary language usage in his excellent blog, The Big Apple, has traced charticle back to February 23, 1998, when it was used by Peter Brimelow in Forbes magazine. By 2001, "Charticle" was a regular section in Forbes.

Hat tip to Nancy Nall, who recently pointed to this very funny* YouTube parody, "Fisticuffs at the Washington Post!" See Act II, at approximately 0:37: "Where Are We with the Charticle?" ("I'll tell you where we are—we're at the bottom of the heap!") Language NSFW. For background on the actual newsroom brawl being parodied, see this Washingtonian account.

___

* Funny to ink-stained wretches, that is.