My New Year’s Resolution? Fewer adjectives, more verbs. It’s gonna be tough.

Piling on adjectives is tempting for sales and marketing copywriters–it’s always tempted me, that’s for sure. But for descriptive and persuasive power, I’d rank the parts of speech this way–

Now I’ll try to prove it. Consider this piece of made-up, stripped-down ad copy.

Sometimes one noun and one verb are enough. But here we need one more noun–

Are you ready to buy a can of Reemo? Probably not, unless your garbage disposal just tried to digest an elephant. So let’s punch it up with an adverb–

We’ve introduced speed, something prized by every consumer. The message is made! But so often, the writer cannot resist adding an adjective–

Viola! With a single adjective, we’ve reduced a solid benefit into ad-speak gas.

Sales and advertising copy are littered with words like miraculous and revolutionary and amazing and exciting and powerful and unique. Besides sounding phony … what do these words really tell you? Back to our last sentence–

Amazing Reemo unclogs drains instantly.

Is instant unclogging amazing? I’d say so. But in that case, what does “amazing” add to the concept, except to make it sound less believable? If there’s any doubt Reemo is amazing, forget the word and explain how Reemo is amazing. For instance-

In an independent study, researchers used Reemo to dissolve Plymouth Rock in under fifteen seconds!

Now that’s amazing. The point–Show, don’t tell. Demonstrate, don’t pontificate. Nouns and verbs show. They are extremely visual parts of speech–your mind can see a drain cleaner, and it can see a drain cleaner unclog. It’s not so easy to see amazing or miraculous. Piling on abstract or downright meaningless adjectives indicates …

1. Lazy or hurried writing;
2. A vague understanding of the product or service; or,
3. Nothing about the product or service worth writing about!

But aren’t there useful adjectives? Absolutely–

Nontoxic Reemo
Toxic Reemo

But most of the time, we can explain and persuade more effectively by turning adjectives into verbs. More on that another time.

Word Sell … Funny Business … Semicolons