Field Notes

By: Chelsea Peabody

We learn grammar in the classroom, but what is it like in the real world? Field Notes discusses grammar usage in the “real world” by exploring its use in different professional fields.

Correct grammar usage is important in all fields, but in industries that focus on the dispersion of messages like Advertising and Public Relations, grammar usage has a profound influence on practitioners’ ability to effectively convey their messages. To learn more about grammar’s role in the Advertising industry, I sat down with Copy Editor Shannon Farlow and Copy Writer Kara Glover of Trone Advertising in High Point, NC.

Shannon and Kara approach copy, or the text of an advertisement, from different angles. Kara’s job is to create the message that will reach audiences and call them to action, whether it be buying her client’s product or raising awareness about an issue. She uses words and grammar to craft a creative message that will stand out to consumers through the advertising noise they experience every day.

Shannon, a copy editor by day and Southern Gothic writer by night, approaches the copy from the other side – it is his job to make sure that the copy has no errors including spacing issues, spelling issues and grammar issues. The most common mistakes that he see are sentence fragments, run-on sentences, comma splices, commonly misspelled words, agreement issues, dangling modifiers and capitalization issues. Shannon also checks the copy against style manuals including The Chicago Manual of Style, The Associated Press Stylebook, Turabian style, The New York Times Manual and the MLA Handbook. He explains that each client uses a different stylebook based on its industry or the publications that it will be placing advertisements and feature pieces. Shannon tries his best to memorize the style books, but because there are so many different styles, he relies on the stylebooks to make corrections. He can usually spot grammar issues without stylebooks, but he was not always a grammar aficionado, in fact Shannon feels that he did not truly “know” grammar until he was a graduate student at UNC Greensboro earning a Masters in Publishing and Editing.

Kara’s relationship with grammar is different from Shannon’s relationship. She works closely with Trone’s Art Directors to convey their creative ideas through words. While she is the advertisement’s writer, she spends more time brainstorming ideas than actually writing. When she does write Kara is allowed to break the rules of grammar, but only if it helps her ad and her client approves of the error. She believes that the right to break grammar rules in advertising copy writing is not a license to ignore them. According to Kara rules should only be broken if the writer understands the rule he or she broke and can explain how breaking the rule improved the piece. For example, advertisements routinely rely on sentence fragments to add emphasis. To. The. Advertisement. She believes that strong grammar skills are essential to be an effective writer and advises students to learn as much as they can about good sentence structure so they can effectively manipulate sentences to change its meaning.

While both Kara and Shannon mostly focus on print advertisements, they have both noticed a change in their writing needs. Kara does not think that print advertisements will die, but predicts that she will be asked to write for the internet more and more. She explains that working with the internet has changed her writing because she must not only focus on conveying her message clearly and correctly, but in the appropriate manner for internet readers.

In advertising words are money. Advertisers must be able to convey the most meaning through the least amount of words. Copywriters and Editors like Kara Glover and Shannon Farlow manipulate words and add meaning to their client’s products while following the grammar rules of correct writing. Through their work they show the grammar’s power to manipulate meaning and the importance of communicating clearly and effectively.

To Learn more about Shannon, Kara and Trone Advertising, visit Trone's website at http://www.trone.com/