The Gallery of Errors · Specimen 903

The Travel Brochure

A Regional Tourism Office · Discover Coastal Splendour (a composed specimen) · Front panel

hover or select a marked phrase · click to keep its explanation open

Nestled in nature's napkin of nourishing niceness, our seaside sanctuary

simply sizzles with sun-soaked, spirit-soothing splendour.

Here, memories are made, dreams come true, and every sunset paints a

picture-perfect postcard of paradise that money simply cannot buy.

What goes wrongAlliteration run to mania, figures no mind can picture, and clichés laid end to end. Sound has been maximized and sense has quietly left the premises.

OccasionA brochure must make one stretch of coastline sound better than the next town's identical stretch. The writer reached for every tool at once.

PersonaInstitutional enthusiasm; the voice of no one in particular, delighted about everything.

Device index

Hover over a device to highlight its words. Select it to keep the explanation open.

Tropes

Catachresisthe napkin

A strained or impossible figure.

Hyperboleblanket coverage

Systematic overstatement.

Schemes

Alliterationmania

Repeated initial sounds in neighbouring words.

Enumeratioof clichés

A listed accumulation of items.

Syntax

Intensifier Dependence

Adverbs doing work the nouns and verbs have declined.

Close reading

1The Autopsy

Count the decisions made by sound: napkin (for the n), niceness (for the n), sizzles (for the s), splendour (for the s). Nearly half the content words were chosen by their first letters. That is the core problem: a sentence assembled sound-first, meaning-second. The clichés then finish the job: where the alliteration was at least energetic, "memories are made" is a phrase that has never made anyone feel anything, which is why committees trust it.

2The Repair

Name things. "The beach is a mile of white sand. The water is warm until October. At sunset, the whole bay turns copper." Three facts, one image, no adverbs. Specific detail is the only thing a brochure can offer that a reader believes.