Monday, September 20, 2010

Classifieds Need Editing, Too

This ad was seen in the current issue of Ka Leo:
Work Wanted
Looking for a part time offer where you can earn
extra income at your own flexible schedule plus
benefits that takes only little of your time.
Requirements -
* Should be a computer Literate.
* 1-2 hours access to the internet weekly.
* Must be Efficient and Dedicated
contact us with your resume for more details and
job information at
eheatherallbeautycosinc@gmx.com

Hurry.don't wait! This great opportunity is limited
so contact All Beauty Cosmetics Inc. today!
So, I think it's fair to say that the classifieds don't get edited! Let's see what we can do with this...
Help Wanted
Looking for a part-time job with benefits where you can earn
extra income on a flexible schedule that only takes a little
of your time?

Requirements -
* Should be computer literate.
* Access Internet 1-2 hours weekly.
* Must be efficient and dedicated.

Email your resume to Heather at eheatherallbeautycosinc@gmx.com
for more information and details.
Hurry, don't wait! This great opportunity is limited.
Contact All Beauty Cosmetics, Inc. today!
I'm assuming that the email address is correct, but it might be a good idea to verify it with the submitter, too. As a suggestion to the submitter, I think it might be a good idea to make the email address something a little less confusing. I think she's going for e-heather-all-beauty-cos-inc, but it's easy to see how readers might see the word "ethereal" or "e-health" that might cause the email address to be misentered.

Otherwise, most of the corrections were related to word ordering and inconsistencies in punctuation and capitalization.

3 comments:

Pat said...

Thank you for posting this, Lisa. Great examples of bad advertising copy and good editing.

I would change only a few things in your edited version. One reason would be to break apart the modifying phrases in the first sentence (beginning with "Looking"), and the other would be to make the asterisked items more strictly parallel.

Everyone else, note Lisa's sound editing decisions:

1. replacing (a) "Work" with "Help" and (b) "offer" with "job";
2. moving "benefits" next to the noun it goes with;
3. replacing the incorrect "at your own flexible schedule" with the correct "on a flexible schedule";
4. inserting the article "a" before "little of your time";
5. fixing the capitalization in the asterisked items;
6. changing the noun "a computer Literate" to the modifier "computer literate"; and
7. fixing the punctuation and capitalization in the "contact" and "Hurry" sections.

Also note her remarks on the e-mail address; those could be posed to the author in a query.

Re making the asterisked items more parallel, here is one solution among many:

Applicants should
* be computer literate
* have Internet access 1–2 hours weekly
* be efficient and dedicated.

Pat said...

I should have said something about the requirements of classified ads. Usually, the advertiser pays by the word or the column inch, so space is at a premium. Having such restrictions makes it difficult to compose good advertising copy and to edit it.

Cindy said...

This is a great post and excellent follow-up, thanks Lisa and Pat.