And what if the prospect is just a random name for which you've overpaid a list company? Same deal: It's “acceptance form.” When making the wording fit confounds you, go back to square one and realize that the name of the form is simply acceptance of an offer to do business, and the wording within the form can match any circumstance.

That brings us to the pet gripe of any professional communicator: Hitting a Web buyer with a two-by-four just at the moment when the marriage is about to be consummated — the word “submit.” Even subliminally, “submit” puts the customer in a position inferior to the vendor. That's far outside the boundary of professional salesmanship.

SOME PEOPLE NEVER LEARN

That subhead might have been “Some Professional Marketers Never Learn,” but the sample I'm looking at (in a classroom I'd say “at which I'm looking,” but this column is a communication, not a lecture) doesn't qualify as professional marketing.

It's a standard mailing from Capital One to an existing cardholder, who uses its card only when a source won't accept American Express. The envelope is as boilerplate as envelope copy can be: “DO NOT DISCARD — For Current Capital One^® Cardholder.” Then, in red, a poor rubber-stamp effect: “IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED” (Fig. 1).

Even before knowing what's inside, don't you sense quickly that whatever it is isn't important? How right you are.

The first sentence of the letter: “I'm happy to let you know you're pre-selected to apply for this Capital One Visa^® Business Platinum Card offer!”

If you were teaching a basic course in copywriting and a C student handed in this deplorable example, wouldn't you either patiently explain it's an amateurish and non-motivational way to begin a letter to someone who already has your card? Or you might suggest switching to another course of study.

Discover, a competitor, has a page in a newspaper's freestanding insert (Fig. 2). Relevant and useful information is there, neatly buried under a headline: “Make your money worth More^SM.” Reading the ad — which I did reluctantly after the “Ugh” at the headline — I identified another technique that keeps journeymen on a plateau well below meistersingers: The card, internally, has been dubbed “More.” The word doesn't appear on the card, but the creative team obviously is more dedicated to pleasing management than to influencing readers.

An e-mail offer from First Plus Platinum Credit (Fig. 3) is headed: “Credt Line Notification #33345-H-50742.” Text, exactly as it appears on the screen, begins: “Attention! There Could be Big changes in your future. How would you like a 7,500 Unsecured Credt Line? Imagine, you could be purchasing many of the items you've always wanted!”

No, this isn't my typo and it isn't Direct's typo. Throughout, this execrable example of amateurism spells the word “Credt.” I Googled the spelling, and only because I was determined to penetrate what obviously was a proprietary misspelling, I penetrated the ridiculous acronym — “Credit, Receivables, and DeducTion.” Of what possible value is that to anyone except the blindly arrogant marketing team?

A MANTRA FOR 2009

You can see why wordsmithy isn't to be risked to dilettantes, beginners, or, apparently, credit card companies whose sales psychology is locked in the 1980s.

You also can see the logic behind the mantra of all of us who toil in the dungeons of direct response, where reliance on tradition and personal prejudices and a pat on the head by know-nothing superiors will result only in our being pushed down into a lower-level cage:

The purpose of a DR message is to cause the reader, viewer or listener to perform a positive act as the direct result of exposure to that message.

Any other purpose is ego-food with no caloric value.

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (www.herschellgordonlewis.com) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Pompano Beach, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide.

Editor's note: This is one of an occasional group of articles on word use by Herschell Gordon Lewis, Direct's Curmudgeon-at-Large. He's widely regarded as an authority on the choice and use of words in marketing copy.