A Critique of Pure Drivel

Dear AI Bot,

You recently assembled a list of seven tips for copywriters who wish to improve their skills. The post on LinkedIn mentions that you received assistance from the ‘LinkedIn-community’. I assume said community includes expert copywriters who may wonder why you decided to insert that rather silly hyphen. Has nobody bothered to explain the rules governing the use of that punctuation mark? I guess not.

Anyway, dear bot, I confess to tripping repeatedly over your pokey use and abuse of the English language. I realise that your intelligence is artificial and that you lack both situational and contextual awareness. Still, you aim to enlighten copywriters and I find that not just presumptuous but downright misleading. As I perused your tips, my irritation increased to the point where it could no longer be contained. This critique – more about that word in a bit – is the outcome of my aggravation.

Already in the title you reveal your pompous self by employing the verb ‘to utilise’. I know that matters of taste are best not discussed, but pray tell us what is wrong with ‘to use’. You see, quite often those who use ‘to utilise’ want to show off their mastery of the English language. I agree that ‘to utilise’ sounds more sophisticated than does its simplified sibling.

There are few, in any, instances that demand the enhanced version of the verb. Some tenuously argue that ‘to utilise’ is best employed when referring to something leveraged for a new intent, whereas ‘to use’ indicates that you avail yourself of something for its intended purpose. Examples abound: you can ‘use’ a hammer to drive in a nail, or you can utilise a wrench to do so. Hence, ‘to utilise feedback’ is wrong. After all, the intended purpose of feedback is to improve the performance of its receiver as you emphasise ad nauseam.

On to the next issue which surfaces in your first tip ‘Embrace Critique’. Here, you merrily slip on several banana peels. Critique and criticism are not interchangeable nouns. A critique is normally understood to be a tract, essay, discourse, or other form of argued criticism of any given phenomenon. I do not know if you are familiar with philosophy in general and the work of Immanuel Kant in particular.

However, I’m quite sure that you can regurgitate Mr Kant’s work. I’m also quite sure that you are wholly ignorant of its meaning and how it relates to life. Whilst you may be able to define concepts such as metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, transcendental idealism, etc to perfection, their meaning, value, and application probably elude you.

But I digress.

Do you think Mr Kant could have named one of his major works ‘Criticism of Pure Reason’ instead of ‘Critique of Pure Reason’? Of course not. Mr Kant possessed real intelligence whilst you must make do with the artificial clueless version.

Regrettably, there is yet more wrong with your first tip. My next criticism concerns your rather pathetic use of ‘criticisms’. I rolled my eyes with this one and shook my head in disbelief. Do you also talk of ‘sheeps’, ‘salmons’, and ‘aircrafts’? How about ‘jeans’ and ‘scissors’? Do you perchance add an extra ’s’ to denote their plural form? Just asking.

Criticism is one of those curious words that contain their own plural in an unaltered state. In technical terms, criticism is an uncountable noun. Now you may have been instructed to use the linguistic monstrosity also known as American English and I’ll readily grant you that a few of its practitioners do seem to use ‘criticisms’ (countable noun) when the criticism emanates from multiple sources. Please check out this most hilarious video to understand my beef with American English and the dumbing-down it introduced.

Let’s move on to tip two. You’re showing signs of improvement already. That hyphen is placed correctly though your use of ‘critiques’ is off on two counts. First, I assume that the brand expert has not written an essay outlining all the reasons for his/her criticism of the poor copywriter’s work. So ‘critique’ is out. Twice over because critique is also an uncountable noun, unless it refers the multiple essays.

For now, I’ll skip tips three and four. Your syntax is perfect, as is your choice of words. However, tip five again reveals your clumsy artificial side. ‘Learnings’, really? I’d argue that a little learning is a dangerous thing. By the way, that was Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism. Read it, you may find its ‘learnings’ interesting.

Let’s now try a bird’s eye view of your seven tips. You seem obsessed with the concept of feedback. In fact, you write about nothing else. The first six of your seven tips concern feedback and what to do with it. Are you being paid by the word? You could have summarised your tips under a single heading without detriment to the value of your advice. Perhaps tip seven contains that elusive nugget of wisdom. Alas, it does not. Maybe you were shooting for the biblical number that symbolises completion or perfection. Or you just craved rest on the seventh tip. It must have been quite exhausting to wade through so many open doors.

Although you cannot be held accountable for the comments that your tips elicited, they did provide a few precious insights. Perhaps Jéssica Cabede, touted a ‘LinkedIn Top Voice Copywriting’, takes the prize.

In Portuguese she writes that asking questions enables the copywriters to communicate ‘strategically’ and say what the client wants to hear. Whilst I understand where she’s coming from, I’d argue that a copywriter may also wish to don his or her own thinking cap. More often than not, what the client wants to ‘hear’ is out of sync with the target demographic or, worse, common sense.

Nandagopal Rajan, chief operations officer at Indian Express Digital, gets it: “write to express and not to impress.” His advice would likely benefit most brand experts as well.

Yours Sincerely, WR.