Monday 9 May 2016

Ads have different 'rules' for how to punctuate. Why pretend they don't?



I travel a lot on the London Underground and walk round the streets; I spend a good deal of time reading ads and signs. When it comes to punctuation, ads are a diy rules zone. It's not just that there are commas and full stops that seem to have gone missing. Like this one, say:

 'This is a residential area please leave carefully' - [no commas or full stops].


but in ad-land you can insert full stops as part of the look: Like this one:

 'Planet. Sized. Brain.'


Or, if you want, you can do that kind of jolly sprinkling of full stops, in amongst traditionally correct ones and in amongst sentences with none at all: Like this this: 

'Mortgages. Courtesy of our savers. 
We approve 9 out of 10 mortgage applications. 
Welcome back to local banking [NO full stop]'

Why tell children that this stuff either doesn't exist or is 'wrong'?