Regards,
Bill Huddleston, CFC Expert
www.cfcfundraising.com

If I had written “Attention Business Entrepreneurs” in a headline for any printed piece, I’m sure my phone would ring with a few indignant English professors, retired librarians and itchy copywriters, which may not be my market, but could make me feel badly about the copy regardless. That is, unless I made a wheelbarrow full of money from that ad.

I hear lots of bad grammar in radio spots, and yes, it makes me cringe, but might the redundancy issue here be outweighed by the nature of the medium–where the auditory message may get scant attention from drivers only listening with one ear? They may need to hear that second word to pay enough attention to think about picking up the phone. Thoughts?

My point was that “business entrepreneur” is strained and a poor choice of words because it comes off as redundant, but if you consider “entrepreneur” in its most recent incarnations, “business entrepreneur” is not a perfect redundancy.

I never tested it, but I would be willing to bet that the phrase “Free Gift” pulls better than just saying “gift.” I’d rather win a customer than please my English teacher.

One editor started changing sentences in an article of mine that started with “And” or “But.” I held my ground and rejected the changes… no ifs ands or buts!

Rudolf Flesch wrote a chapter in “The Art of Readable Writing” called “Did Shakespeare Make Mistakes in English?” Yes he did. And so what?! If Mark Twain had stuck to the rules of grammar… we wouldn’t have “Huckleberry Finn”!

What’s important is what works. Yes, Dianna. It’s always good to be specific. And a Free CD may work better than a generic “gift.” But the phrase “Free Gift” resonates in a way that triggers a visceral response. And response is what it’s all about.

Morty

Think of this phrase “Think Smart.”

Now, we all know that it should be “Think Smartly” to be correct, but you see this being done everywhere. It has always bugged me but it works.

No doubt he would have also thought that a chassidic rabbi I know who sports a website with some very snazzy copy is also an entrepreneur.

Bob, while the Oxford English Dictionary does seem to restrict the activities of an entrepreneur to business, if you go to www.onelook.com, a nifty compilation of a hundred and one dictionaries, and then click on to “search all dictionaries,” you’ll get a slightly broader meaning: “someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it.”

It is this element of risk that the economist was looking for — an element which brings the rabbi and the grants seeker and a lot of other folks into the entrepreneurial fold.

All this said, Bob, the example you gave does sound strained. Is it possible that the writer was trying to avoid writing the antifeminist “businessMAN” and the silly sounding “businessPERSON,” and wound up tripping over his own copy?

I can’t handle — “We’ll send you a free gift!” I have seen this more times than I count.

In your sentence, you named the “gift” — the bonus CD — and to make sure people understood they didn’t have to pay for it, you said it was free.

But you did not say, “Respond today and we’ll send you a free gift!”