Nuanced Nouns and Verbal Venacular can Make a Marketing Mess

As someone who writes frequently and studied copywriting in college, I tend to pickup on little nuances and mistakes of other writers. I thought it would be fun to compile a list of misused nouns and verbs that I often see creeping up in our contemporary vernacular.

Nouns:
• Say you have chapped lips. You apply a lip balm. I’ve often heard Chapstick used as a generalization for lip balm. But what if you use Blistex, or Vaseline, or Soft Lips?

• What do you blow your nose into? A tissue of course. Now it may be a Kleenex-brand tissue, or it may be Puffs. “Hand me a Kleenex” is another misuse of a brand name.

• Make a photocopy and it may be done on a Xerox-brand machine. Or it could be a Hewlett Packard. You don’t make a Xerox of a document. A Chicago Tribune article published in last Sunday’s Buffalo News used Xerox incorrectly. Shame on the editor.

• Portable CD players are nearly as extinct as the Walkman. Why? Because of MP3 players, Apple’s iPod which is a bellwether among them. But referring to all brands of MP3 players as iPods? This is just another common misuse.

Verbiage:
• My generation has one phrase that is synonymous with doing research: “I’ll Google it.” Google, a thing (noun) has become a something you do (a verb). What if a web user doesn’t like Google? Can they Yahoo! something? Or MSN it? How about we AltaVista it?

• I edit my digital photos (and display many on this blog).  While I prefer Adobe Photoshop, does that mean I Photoshopped my photos?  I could always use Corel or Picassa.  Often similar results can be achieved. 

• Getting directions off the internet has also become commonplace, especially for those who don’t have an in-car navigation system. So do you Mapquest your final destination? Or do you Bing it? Or Google Map it?

• VCRs, even recordable DVDs, are so last decade. In 2010 we record our TV shows digitally off of cable, satellite, etc. Maybe we use a Tivo set-top box, or maybe we use the Scientific Atlanta iteration offered by Time Warner Cable. “Tivo-ing” a TV show has, however, become a catchall verb for using a DVR.

• Back to Xerox again. If you just Xeroxed that document, you quite possibly used this verb incorrectly.

• Kohl’s is my employer. They’ve craftily turned Kohl’s (a noun) into something you do in the latest ad campaign: “The More You Know, the More You Kohl’s.” In my case, the more I owe, the more I [must] Kohl’s.

I suppose there are probably a lot more, this is just a few little nuances I’ve picked up on lately. Feel free to add to the list. There’s a Comments section at the end of this post for a reason.

This funky photo is of my iPod Shuffle that died.  It was replaced under warranty and died again.  That's when I got Creative—as in a Zen Nano by Creative Labs.  See why it's necessary to not lump all MP3 players as iPods?  And that nifty colorized effect?  It's Photoshopped...