17 Aug

The curse of copywriting

What does the title of this post refer to? The fact that I cannot switch off from anything written, even during my leisure time.

I was on my way back from a lovely evening celebrating a friend’s birthday, when I spotted this opposite me:

Algarve1

Algarve2

Just reading it through once, something jarred me. Anyone else would leave this, or simply not care, but I had to know why the copy irritated me – I had to analyse it.

You can click on the image, but the copy reads:

Picturing 
Algarve?
Não. It is actually Lulworth Cover, Dorset.

The idea itself is fine; ‘this beautiful beach, with rocky outcrops and turquoise water, is actually in the UK / why go abroad?’

The wording is odd though.
Algarve is more commonly known as ‘The Algarve’. Saying ‘Picturing Algarve’ makes the copy sound like it’s written in broken English.

Inexplicably, the copy then slips into Portuguese: ‘Não’ instead of ‘no’.
It then reverts to English.

After that, ‘it is’ follows on, rather than the contraction ‘it’s’, making the whole thing sound a little clumsy.

That last line would’ve read better if it had simply said; ‘Nope. It’s actually Lulworth Cover, Dorset.’

Overall, it should’ve read;

Picturing 
The Algarve?
Nope. It’s actually Lulworth Cover, Dorset.

All of this went through my head in a matter of seconds, but therein lies the curse of anyone who deals with words each day – the inability to switch off from something as irrelevant as an ad, on a train, asking people to visit Dorset.

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