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This is the so-called “golden rectangle,” the most pleasing of all rectangular forms. The attention-line CD is at the point that makes the upper section a “golden rectangle.” The capital letter “H” is also one of the most common arrangements in advertising. The square is another pleasing figure and there are many other forms in which advertising matter may be balanced.
Advertising occupies space for which a high rate frequently is paid. Brief statement is therefore a factor of great importance. If a small space is all that is available, the problem of attracting attention becomes most important. It should be evident that a few words clearly and plainly printed are far more effective in a small space than a long message that is in such fine print that it will strain the eyes of the reader. In the one case you say something at least to your reader. In the other, you have no chance to say anything because you have tried to say too much. When it is necessary to confine your message to a small space, the attention-sentence, or in some cases the command-sentence, is the part to use. Many signs seen from the rapidly moving window of a street-car or railroad train carry only the name of the product attractively displayed, with a command to use it.
Select one of the articles for which you have written advertising and write a complete advertising campaign for it, including five newspaper advertisements, five magazine advertisements, a four-page folder for distribution, signs for street-cars, signs for posting along highways, and other devices that you think would be effective.
Most newspapers carry columns of classified advertising consisting of many small advertisements grouped together under various heads. These are commonly used by the public for getting help; obtaining situations; buying, selling, and renting real estate; and disposing of miscellaneous articles. The principles of advertising compositions apply also to these advertisements. The attention-factor is not so important, however, as the reader of the advertisements in the classified columns is looking for the article or service that you to have sell. A glance through the classified columns of a newspaper will show clearly the increased attractiveness resulting from the skillful arrangement of details and the use of clear forceful words.
Write an advertisement offering a room of your home to rent, using not more than thirty words; an advertisement applying for work for which you consider yourself fitted; an advertisement offering for sale a house with which you are familiar.
SONG FROM “PIPPA PASSES”
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world.
Robert Browning.
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“He [Goethals] received last week three medals—one at Washington, at the hands of President Wilson, from the National Geographical Society; another in New York, at the hands of Dr. John H. Finley, head of the New York State Educational System, from the Civic Forum; and a third, also in New York, at the hands of Hamilton W. Mabie, from the National Institute of Social Sciences. At the presentation of the Civic Forum medal, a poem written for the occasion was read by its author, Mr. Percy MacKaye.” (The Outlook. March 14, 1914.) This poem is here quoted, by permission, from Mr. MacKaye’s volume, The Present Hour. Published by The Macmillan Company, New York.
[1]Reprinted by permission of Funk & Wagnalls Company.
[2]Reprinted, by permission of The Macmillan Company, from the introduction of Sense and Sensibility, edited by Edwin L. Miller.
[4]Reprinted by permission of the author, Mr. G. A. Batchelor, of the Detroit Free Press.
[5]Reprinted by permission of Life.
[7]Reprinted by permission of Munsey’s.
[8]Reprinted by permission of The Dial.
[9]Reprinted by permission of Collier’s Weekly.
[10]Reprinted by permission of Puck.
[11]Coleridge here illustrates the feet while explaining them, an admirable device in exposition. “Dactyl” is a fine word; in Greek it means “finger”; like a finger, a poetic dactyl has three parts, one long and two short. “Anapest” comes from a Greek verb which means “strike back”; an anapest is a reversed dactyl. Most English poems are written in iambi. Longfellow’s Hiawatha is in trochees, Evangeline in dactyls, and The Destruction of Sennacherib (see page 70) in anapests.
[12]Reprinted by permission of The Outlook.
[13]Reprinted by permission of the Philadelphia Record.
[14]Built about 1800, the frigate Constitution had a career that aroused popular fancy. She was at the bombardment of Tripoli in 1804; captured the British frigate Guerrière August 2, 1812; captured the British frigate Java December 29, 1812; and on February 20, 1815, captured the British ships Cyane and Levant. In 1830, when it was proposed to break her up, Holmes wrote this poem by way of protest. The result was that the ship was preserved. She now lies at the Boston Navy Yard, an object of great historic and patriotic interest. The poem is a kind of poetic editorial.
[15]When the Greeks were about to set sail for Troy, Artemis, being angry with their commander King Agamemnon, becalmed their ships at Aulis. The seer Calchas thereupon declared that the goddess could be propitiated only by the death of Iphigeneia, the daughter of Agamemnon. This legend forms the theme of tragedies by Euripides, Racine, and Goethe.
[16]Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot, yet ill able
Ever to keep up with Dactyl trisyllable;
Iambus moves from short to long;
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.