expertSEM

An English profession in college once told me that the best way to improve my writing was to read. Read everything and anything. It didn’t matter that I wanted to be a novelist—he told me to read nonfiction. Read mystery, science fiction, smutty romance, biographies, philosophy. Read the cannon and contemporary lit. Read work by British authors and Irish authors. Read translations of old and new work from foreign authors. Read until my eyes blurred and I lost all contact with society (okay, maybe he didn’t say that last point, but it is a real consequence of being a bookworm and you get the idea).

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You might be thinking, How many mistakes can one person make in just 70 characters? Check out this ad and tell me if you would click on it:

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Brand terms are considered proper nouns, which means that they are always capitalized regardless of where they fall in a sentence. But what about brand terms that are meant to be all lowercase (for example, let’s use…oh, I don’t know…how about, expertSEM!)? The first part of the word, expert, should be all lowercase. SEM, because it is an intialism for “search engine marketing,” should be all caps. But what happens when it is placed at the beginning of a sentence?

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I was recently asked to write some ad copy for a client’s LGBT campaign. Naturally, I became a bit nervous that I might inadvertently offend someone with my messages. Now, don’t get me wrong, I lived in Los Angeles for two years and spent most of my time in WeHo, hanging, dancing and drinking with my boys. Many a lively night was spent at The Abbey, PopStarz, HERE, O-Bar and other homo haunts that I can’t remember the names of. And before you gasp at my language use, you must understand that I was allowed to say “homo haunt” and numerous other raucous and would-be insulting comments. I was permitted this liberty because I was part of the community and, thus, even though I was neither gay nor a man (and still am neither, in case you were wondering!), it was accepted as endearing banter. What worried me was, if I included some of my snarky comments or insider terminology in the ads, would people view it as me understanding the customers or would they think I was being rude?

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