As a carrier of information in today’s high-speed commodity economy, advertisements have penetrated into all spheres of life to become indispensable part of modern life. And also, as a mean of disseminating information, the wording of the advertising English should be simple, clear, catchy and of great distinction.
The lexical features of English advertisements:
(1) The wording should highlight the main features of the products and rich in imagination and creativity. There are many new and strange words to meet consumers’ pursuit for vogue. For example: The Orangemostest Drink in the world. This is a beverage advertising, in which Orangemostest is actual made of orange + most + est, to tell the customers this drink is the best orange juice of all.
(2) Widely Use a lot of commendatory adjectives and their comparative and superlative form to attract customers and enhance the charm of the product. For example: Excellent daily specials and mouthwatering desserts. This is an advertisement from a restaurant, in which almost half of the entire ad words are adjectives, make it very tempting.
(3) Use simple and straightforward words, in order to make the product easily understood and accepted by the general public words. Common nouns, monosyllabic words, verbs are mostly used words in our everyday life, such as: buy, be, get, make, live, love, have, come, go, bring, etc.. for example: Buy one pair, get one free (买一赠一). It converts the simplest but the most important and attractive information to the audiences.
(4) The use of an abbreviated words and compound words. To make the customers understand what you want to say at a glance, we should obey the basic characteristics of the advertising: to showcase as much information as possible within a limited time space. Therefore, in order to save costs, English advertisements always use abridged words and compound words.
For example: For Rent: 1 -bdm. mod. furn. 210/mo. A/C avail after Xmas, where bdm., mod., Furn, mo, A / C, avail, Xmas respectively refers to bedroom, modern, furniture, month , air conditioning, available and Christmas. Compound words are more flexible with highly expressive and exuberant vitality, and are suitable to convert novelty..
The syntactic features of English advertisements:
(1) The preference the simple sentence. Advertising wording features distinctive style, and are catchy, neat, antithesis rhyming and durable memorable. There is a saying that, “good advertisements are all known for their short and refining.” For example: “SONY-take the world with you” (让世界陪伴你 – 索尼), “Make dreams come true” (让梦想成真 – 迪士尼乐园), “In touch with tomorrow and tomorrow together” (与明天共进 – 东芝).
(2) The use of imperative sentence. Advertising sentences are all colloquial and usually have strong appeal and popularity. To make the customer impressed while reducing the cost, the advertisers rack their brains to form simple but seductive sentences, and strive to achieve the best results from the sales pitch. This is the so called loaded language, which uses imperative sentences to impressive the audiences. For example: “Turn it on!” ( 穿上它 – 彪马), “Just do it” (只管去做 – 耐克), “You’re worth it!” (你值得拥有 – 巴黎欧莱雅).
There are only three or four words in these familiar slogans, but they show an extraordinary momentum to attract people’s attention, and they also convert the characteristics of the commodities, which arouse the desire of purchase.
(3) The use of commonly omitted sentences. Omitted sentences are simple and decisive and enable advertisement to convey more information in the limited time and space, to enhance the advertising effect.
For example: “We lead. Others copy” (我们领先, 他人仿效 – 理光复印机), Intelligence everywhere (智慧无处不在 – 摩托罗拉手机), Good to the last drop to the last drop (滴滴香浓,意犹未尽 – 麦斯威尔咖啡). These slogans are all distinctive, prominent, compact and eye-catching.
Creativity is the soul of an advertisement, To some extent, it is good wording if the words able to achieve the main purpose of the products and persuade the customers to buy them.