Sales Talk and Liars Who Do The Talking

Every time I go to a mall I see an ad that says to stop in, we are giving away a free gift. Almost half of the mail that I receive has the words" Important" or "Urgent, open when received." To this day I'm still waiting for my free gift, and the mail I receive that says "Important" or "Urgent," it's the first thing to go in the trash unopened. I've just recently read two articles on concepts of advertising, "With These Words I Can Sell You Anything" by William Lutz, and "Language Abuse" by Herchell Gordon Lewis. They both talk about how advertising bends and twist words and definitions to sound great, but ultimately say nothing. Luts takes a very serious approach to his writing. Lewis, on the other hand, takes a very comedic approach to her writing.

The first author I will talk about is Lutz and his article, "With These Words I Can Sell You Anything."

Lewis and Weldon Borland

[Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie, John Lewis, Cecil Pa...

An image to illustrate weasel words on Wikipedia. ...

He takes a very serious approach to his article. Throughout his article, he is always very serious in his writing. He gets to the point and then gives examples of how they are used in advertising. Lutz starts off his article by coining the term "Weasel Words." He says, "A weasel will make a small hole in the egg, suck out the insides, then place the egg back in the nest. Only when the egg is examined closely it is found to be hollow. That's the way it is with weasel words in advertising: Examine weasel words closely and you'll find that they're as hollow as any egg sucked by a weasel." Luts says that weasel words appear to say one thing when in fact they say the opposite or nothing at all. Lutz says that the number...