Where I am freelancing now I am forced to read a lot of decks and "creative direct" a lot of copy. What I see more and more of is 42-word sentences rife with buzz-words or worse, words that have no meaning like "robust."
Whenever I see such flaccid thinking I remember the opening of Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" which in just a few words stops you in your tracks:
"Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,120 feet high, and is said
to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called
the Masai 'Ngqje Ngai\ the House of God. Close to the western
summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one
has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude."
Facts. Cogency. Clarity. Intrigue. Worth thinking about and striving for.
2 comments:
The Simple Declarative Sentence, RIP
What agency did this guy Hemmingway work at? Did they have the Africa account or something?
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