Does your brand have a real editorial style manual? Does your agency have a grammar cop? Do you know why hyphens matter to your bottom line? Do you think I'm crazy? Read this. Takes five minutes.

1. Why Grammar and Punctuation
and Picky Layout Rules
Matter in Advertising
Or: Avoid Hurdles and
Give ’Em Signposts Instead
By Noah Liberman
Chicago, Illinois

2. National Grammar Day
was Sunday, March 4 [2012]
Sunday is a fitting day, because grammar is like religion:
• Grammar guides you past life’s problems to a
better place, like religion.
• Grammar chafes a bit, just like religion.
• Sometimes we break grammar’s rules for a
compelling reason – just like with religion.
• But in the end, grammar gives us clarity, just like
religion.

3. The advertising tie-in: courtesy of
neuromarketer Roger Dooley:
•
•
•
•
•
•
95% of new products fail
98% of direct mail gets no response
98% of emails don’t convert
20% of ad campaigns give no brand lift
20% have negative brand impact
The mind: 95% subconscious

4. The takeaway: Don’t tax the unconscious mind.
Appeal to the conscious mind.
• Make reading and viewing easy and transparent,
so your message comes through.
How?
• Avoid “hurdles” that confuse.
• Use “signposts” that guide.

5. A copy/font example of a hurdle. Read these
copy blocks.

6. In a study, people who read the bottom copy
thought the exercises would take much longer
than people who read the top copy did.

7. This ugly italic font was a huge subconscious
hurdle for readers, and it soured them on the
message.

8. The advertising implications of too many hurdles
and too few signposts:
•
•
•
•
•
Hard-to-read, weak messages
Distracted, frustrated readers
Less effective campaigns, ads, DMs, websites
Frustrated clients
Plague, pestilence and flood (well, in extreme
cases)

9. The conclusion (not to this whole
presentation, sorry):
• Grammar, punctuation and visual cues affect
the success of your message.

10. • Grammar, punctuation and visual cues affect
the success of your message.
• Even when you don’t know grammar/layout
rules, you sense them. (That’s how you
learned language when you were tiny and
how you communicate so naturally right now.)

11. • Grammar, punctuation and visual cues affect
the success of your message.
• Even when you don’t know grammar/layout
rules, you sense them. (That’s how you
learned language when you were tiny and
how you communicate so naturally right now.)
• Mistakes and inconsistencies create conscious
and subconscious hurdles that obscure your
message and leave a bad impression.

12. • Grammar, punctuation and visual cues affect the
success of your message.
• Even when you don’t know grammar/layout
rules, you sense them. (That’s how you learned
language when you were tiny and how you
communicate so naturally right now.)
• Mistakes and inconsistencies create conscious
and subconscious hurdles that obscure your
message and leave a bad impression.
• Give your audience signposts instead, and let
your message work.

13. Avoid hurdles. Some examples and explanations

14. Don’t let your headline outrun the body copy
It frustrates our expectations of a “grid” that helps us
understand how layout parts relate to each other.
It’s a hurdle.
• Better: eBook: How To Use Google+ for Business
• Better: New: How To Use Google+ for Business
• Better yet: REDESIGN the miserable thing.

15. Actually, this layout makes another mistake: the image is
neither fully under the headline nor fully outside it. Big
hurdle! Oh, and the tight gutter between the image and
the copy. Are you feeling subconsciously claustrophobic?
Or is it just this room?

16. Your headline CAN be shorter than the body
copy, but how much shorter?
• A lot shorter if it’s a one-line headline. Can be stylish.
• But if the headline’s more than one line, all lines
should cover most of the width and be fairly similar
in length. Why? to avoid the impression of
randomness that’s distracting – another hurdle.
Better:
Have You Built Your Google+
Business Page Yet? Do It Now

17. When your headline’s more than one line,
don’t break a phrase across lines!
This is a nasty hurdle. “Business Page” has to be on
one line.
Better:
Have You Build Your
Google+ Business Page?
(Now wasn’t that easier to read?)

18. Here’s another example, from a print ad
Isn’t the whole
idea a better
looking smile?
• Perfectly good copy. But bad line breaks make it feel like
you’re riding a tricycle down a staircase, backward.
Better:
Isn’t the whole idea
a better-looking smile?

19. Bulleted/numbered lists: use hanging indents!
Hurdle:
No hurdle (note better line break and consistent
capitalization too). Doesn’t it just “feel” better?:
10. On-Page
Social Sharing
• The point of bullets and numbered lists is ease of
reading and understanding the grouping of ideas.
• Hanging indents help us visually identify each idea.

20. Now let’s turn away from design before the
designers lynch me, and focus on words alone.
Be logical and be consistent!
Example: The ampersand in body copy is a
hurdle; it’s for abbreviations, logos and headers.
Here it looks arbitrary, sloppy and kinda strange
Hurdle: Circles & the value…
No hurdle: Circles and the value…

21. Now, the dreaded hyphen. I’ll keep it brief-ish:
• The hyphen is a great example of what all
punctuation does: avoids hurdles and gives you
signposts, so you absorb the message easily.
• Hyphens tell us how words go together. That’s
important. We’ve already had one example:
Hurdle: a better looking smile
Signpost: a better-looking smile

22. Dreaded hyphen, cont.
• In the hurdle, as you read, for a split-second you’re
unsure how the word after “better” will function.
Will it be a noun (“a better day”)? Will it be an
adjective (“a better looking day”)? Once you reach
“looking,” your mind re-adjusts. But this is extra
work! Too many hurdles like this make reading hard.
Is this how to sell tires?
• With the signpost, you take in the whole phrase
“better-looking.” No extra mental work. Nothing
obscures the message. You want to buy tires!

23. Another example:
SuperTech Brand Management Software
Is it the SuperTech brand of management software? Or is
it brand management software from SuperTech?
A voice actor I worked with thought it was the former.
Hurdle! She put a slight pause after “brand.” (Do it
now, yourself.) We had to re-record the section. When
written with the hyphen, there’s no confusion how to
read it.
SuperTech Brand-Management Software

24. Grammar rule 4,398,493:
He/She who authorizes the checks ultimately makes
the rules.
Corollary: But as an agency, we should be prepared to
explain why the rules help our client.

25. And sometimes hyphens would be too fussy:
A carefully planned going-away party for Sue Janna
(-ly functions like a hyphen already – it preps you for
the next word. So no hyphen needed.)
A very sudsy dishwasher for Nick
(We know that “very” combines with another
descriptive word – it always does. So skip the hyphen.)
A chocolate chip cookie
(Such a common phrase, no threat of a hurdle – a
hyphen would just look pedantic.)

26. The advertising takeaways:
I’ve only offered a few examples, but it should be clear
that grammar, punctuation and visual rules exist
because they make reading and viewing easier and
your message more effective.
They do this by:
• providing signposts
• avoiding hurdles
So provide signposts. Avoid hurdles. And say your
prayers!

27. Epilogue:
Don’t take rules too far. This is advertising, after all.

28. But:
Don’t get complacent.