Avoiding grammish in promotáge (and other common errors).

This is a fluffy kitten. Photo credit Catmoji >. "Fluff" is a word sometimes used to describe additional marketing copy used to fill space.

One of the first (and biggest) hurdles a new copywriter faces is requests for "verbiage," "fluff," "romance copy," and similar trivializing (if unintentional) terms.

To spread some of the love, I suggest these alternatives for their more mundane counterparts:

artishes [art'-әsh-әz] - A set of potentially useful pictures that might enhance a web page.[1]

aspirals [ә-spy'-rәlz] - Aspirational flourishes that make a thing more desirable but also more unattainable.

codage [kōd'-әdg] - Fancy interactive stuff on a web page or app.

grammish - [gram'-әsh] - Grammatical but inscrutable constructions.

promotáge [prō'-mō-tazh'] -  Promotions, offers, incentives, rebates, etc.

complexion [kәm-plek'-shәn] - Additional details that complicate promotáge.

correxion [kor-eck'-shәn] - Unnecessary project changes that facilitate interpersonal collaboration and confirm organizational integrity.

KPIs [kay'-pee'-eyes'] - Key Project Interferers: Statistics that are deemphasized to free bandwidth for competing priorities.  

tweedleze [twee'-dәl-eez'] - Legal print so long or small that no one reads it.

astorrhoids [ass'-tәr-oydz] - Asterisked material for which there is no foregoing referent, or a superfluity of asterisks for multiple referents.

c0

If you can't poke fun at yourself, there's not much sense left in a sense of humor.

c0

[1]

ә is a schwa, which is usually used in linguistics to represent an unaccented vowel, as the italicized letter represents in these pairs: users/usәrs, data/datә, recorded/recordәd, idol/idәl (notwithstanding regional variations; this example is based on my own speech patterns, which are Midwestern, with a bit of Eastern US).

[2014-09-29]

c0