September 30, 2006
View Comments | Post CommentBrevity, Imprecision, and Van Signs
On my way to Dulles today, I saw something that annoyed me greatly. I saw a van, on which was printed the name of the business venture that owned it: TwoPoorTeachers.com. They do renovation, repair work, and other random jobs. And perhaps I shouldn't hold them to a higher standard just because they are ostensibly teachers, but it nevertheless saddened me to see their slogan below that, because it was yet another example of the terrible imprecision with which our culture uses language.
The slogan said, "Nobody does a better job for less." And it sounds reasonable enough. They're trying to imply that they do the highest quality work and are nevertheless affordable. But that isn't really what their slogan says. Instead, they are only claiming that no one who charges less than they do does a better job. In other words, according to their slogan, there could be someone who does a much better job for the same price, or for only slightly more money; or there could be someone who does just as good of a job for much cheaper.
I presume that what they meant to say was, "Nobody does a better job, and nobody does the job for less." But they are apparently inflicted with the same insidious mandate of brevity that has rendered so much of our discourse inane. We refer to political acts by some shortened, cutesy name like "Patriot Act," "Defense Of Marriage Act," or "Deleting Online Predators Act," when the actual statute seldom has anything to do with its name, or at the very least, contains much more than can be summed up with the phrase. Or we refer to a patent as "the one-click patent," or "the shopping cart patent," when the actual app has forty or fifty separate, and highly-technical claims. Our soundbyte culture digests everything into meaningless phrases that fit on one line in a newspaper headline, and into meaningless arguments that can be fought, won, or lost with a single breath's dialogue.
Brevity is something to which we should aspire, but we should strive for the sort of brevity that functions in service of clarity and efficiency. When misguided brevity acts to obscure our ideas, we end up chattering back and forth without any hope or intention of reaching solutions, and we end up looking, to those with sharp eyes, like idiots, just like those two poor teachers.
Posted at September 30, 2006 1:48 PM | Comments (15)
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I agree with most of your complaints, but if I had seen that slogan on a truck, I wouldn't have expected it to intend anything other than what it said.
Why can't they mean that nobody does a better job for less?
Posted by: lsmsrbls at September 30, 2006 4:58 PM
Because the slogan is apparently intended as a sales tool. As such, the statement that nobody does a better job for less should be meaningless to any consumer, and is wasted as a possible sales tool. As a consumer, why wouldn't I be interested in a different company who will do a better job but will charge the same amount as TwoPoorTeachers? And why wouldn't I be interested in a company who will do an equally good job for half the price?
Posted by: David Barzelay at September 30, 2006 8:38 PM
So then, in a Barzelay world, would the slogan have said...
"Nobody does a >= job for
Or would that just be the add for TwoPoorAlgebraTeachers?
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:41 PM
Blast HTML!Ruined my joke. Should have used the preview.
"Nobody does a > = job for
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:42 PM
Ok, should have used the preview there too. Third fucking time:
"Nobody does a > = job for
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:43 PM
OK, this is ridiculous...it showed the less than or equal to in the preview.
Fucking Christshit.
"NOBODY DOES A GREATER THAN OR EQUAL TO JOB FOR LESS THAN OR EQUAL TO"
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:45 PM
Or,let A{} = the set of all businesses that do a job that is better than or quela to us.
And let B{} = the set of all business that do a job for less than or the same amount as us.
(A{} U B{}) = NULL.
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:48 PM
or rather
A{} intersect B{} = NULL SET.
messed that up cause I just got done smoking with Constance Gee.
Posted by: Chris Santoro at September 30, 2006 8:50 PM
I was gonna call you a Grammar ----, but I decided instead to point out that you are being too anal.
-Z-
P.S. You have done this to me before as well (about the imprecisity [sic] of my language)
Posted by: Zeeshan at September 30, 2006 10:13 PM
Chris, try this.
Zeeshan, you can say "Nazi," even on a Jew's blog. Words are only dirty if they are dirty in context. No word is inherently dirty.
And yes, of course I'm being anal about it. It's a rant on my blog. What did you expect? The counterargument is that, because the intended audience of the slogan is probably equally imprecise, the slogan is likely as effective as written as it would be in more articulate form.
Posted by: David Barzelay at October 1, 2006 3:20 AM
You're wrong Barzelay. "Cunt" is inherently dirty, with or without context.
Posted by: Connor at October 1, 2006 10:49 PM
Beloved cunt?
Posted by: Nuf at October 2, 2006 6:19 PM
I remain unconvinced, but I think this conversation would be better suited to an in person interaction.
Posted by: lsmsrbls at October 2, 2006 7:09 PM
I guess as the owner and educated ex-teacher I should have purchased a box truck so that I could get the point accross better. Anyways we work hard and the message is true. We have done over 2800 bathrooms and kitchens in the past 7 years, and I am wondering if this gentelmen understands the concept of hard work.. Get a life! Thanks for everyone elses support.
Posted by: ken at May 7, 2008 1:14 PM
Oh, and the slogan is "nobody does IT better for less" I didn't pick on him in High School I promise
Posted by: ken at May 7, 2008 1:20 PM
