Incomplete comparisons in TV advertising are worse ...

As a language and linguistics geek, someone who thinks in terms of misplaced modifiers and interdental fricatives, I am quick to pick up on things like new turns of phrase, double entendres and "improper" grammar. I put improper in quotes because I'm a member of the descriptive linguist camp. That means I think grammar should be defined as what people actually say and therefore it evolves over time as opposed to a descriptivist who says grammar is a list of hard fast rules and those who vary from them are wrong. Descriptivists point to things like the transition from our use of thee and thou to you as an example of changing grammar. Prescriptivists pull their hair out when they hear someone say things like You need to put that up or Do you want to come along?, ending a sentence in a preposition being, in their view, a mortal sin. A Linguistics professor might shudder at my concise and simplistic definition of the two (unless he’s a devout descriptivist), but you get the idea. Before I go into a lengthier geekier diatribe, let me just say I don’t care when people end their sentences in prepositions, or if they write nite instead of night or if they pronounce ask as “ax”. There is however a change in our language that seems to be occurring that even I, the linguistic hippy, can’t stand and it’s being promulgated by the media, specifically television commercials.

I don’t hear the soft drink commercial anymore but there used to be an ad where the announcer said Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper. I cringed every time I heard this commercial. Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper . . . than what? A pastrami on rye? Ocean water? A bucket of shit? Or is the implied comparative more complex than that? Maybe they mean to say that Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than Diet Coke tastes like regular Coke. We, the consumers, are left in the dark on this and apparently invited to come up with our own ending to the comparison. Sure Diet Dr. Pepper may taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than a plate of mashed potatoes but does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than its Pepsi doppelganger, Mr. Pibb? I doubt it.

Wendy’s had a similar irksome catch phrase in their ad a few months back. Wendy’s: It’s better here. Remember that? It’s better here than where? Hell? It’s better here than Afghanistan? It’s better here than a sick drunk’s toilet? Where exactly is Wendy’s better than? Does anyone remember if they even compared their burgers to other fast food joints so as to offer up proof as to why they’re better and suggest to us who exactly it is they’re better than? I’m sure the advertising execs for Wendy’s want us to think it’s better at Wendy’s than at Burger King, but I can’t help but think the ad should say Wendy’s: It’s better here . . . than when we used to serve human fingers in the chili. Furthermore what is it ? What’s better here? The food is better here? The service? Mold growth in the kitchen? I could go on an on.

And I think I will. Just yesterday I saw an ad on television for Monster.com that proclaimed If you post your resume on Monster, you’re twice as likely to get hired. Dear blog reader, are you catching on? Can you see why this bugs me as well?. If you post your resume on Monster you’re twice as likely to get hired . . .as you would get struck by lightning? Win the lottery? Because those odds don’t encourage me to post my resume on Monster. Now on the other hand if the commercial promised me that if I posted my resume on Monster I’d be twice as likely to get hired as I would swallow after eating or be held down by the forces of gravity, well now, those are some good odds. Or again, maybe I’m misinterpreting the comparison. If you post your resume on Monster, you’re twice as likely to get hired than if you had just posted it on the wall in the men’s room. Maybe those who post their resumes on Monster are twice as likely to get hired as those who are listed on the local Sex Offenders Registry. Could someone please clarify?

I know this is one of those things that I should just let ride. The inboxes of these companies are probably chocked full of emails from geeks like me saying the same thing. The rest of the viewing public likely has more pressing issues than whether a fast food ad complies with widely accepted usage rules of the English language. If Dave and Wendy and the good people at Dr. Pepper and Monster don't care that they're sending incomplete comparisons over the airways and therefore beginning to but not totally making their point, what do I care? I'm only one man, a proper noun swimming in a sea of ambiguous antecedents. Why didn't those geniuses at Schoolhouse Rock come up with a catchy ditty about this one?

Commercials used to simply tout their products' qualities and show us some smiling character happy to be enjoying whatever the ad was for. Sometimes they'd throw in an interrogative quip like Where's the beef? or Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too? Those were ads that made me want to buy a product instead of dedicating a couple of hours to explaining why the ads are an English language schoolmarm's worst nightmare. Commercials were better then.

Then they are today, I mean.

You knew that's what I meant.

Right?