Keep it terse
Sir: You'll remember those two pages of political ads (14 November) over the slogan 'Keep it Local'. Mustn't grumble, I suppose. Welcome revenue for the Spectator. But think. Why did the copywriter write them in such barbarous style? Who did he imagine he was talking to? Why did his constructions run in threes, like this? Or fours?
Maybe he figured it this way. That people who read Ferdinand Mount every week. And Auberon Waugh. And the others. Are manifestly savages. So he socks it to us in sentences, each no longer than a grunt. In sets of non sequiturs. Often minus the verb. Nor does he squander question marks on such as us (would we even know what they were for). And like all brutish gabblings, nobody can be surprised at the odd anacoluthon.
Or is his excuse that he was also writing for other less literate papers — like The Times, and the Guardian?
Maurice Smelt
36 Glenloch Road, London NW3
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