Time’s up for our little contest on improving the text of that beach resort poster that has been carried by the Forum for over two weeks now.
There are only two entries, but before I announce the outcome of the contest, let me just say something about writing grammatically well in English and communicating well in English. These, as every practitioner and student of communication knows, are two entirely different things.
The problem with that beach resort poster is actually two-fold: it’s written in excruciatingly bad English, and it is bad communication no matter if expressed in impeccable English or in any language for that matter.
The bad English is the easier part to cure, and I think Arvin Ortiz did a very admirable job in doing that. The version he submitted is grammatically perfect and leaves very little to be desired insofar as good English is concerned. On the other hand, JonathanFValdez’s “take it or leave it” version is startlingly clear and concise; I don’t think anybody could do much better than his “2 cents worth” of improvement of the poster text in terms of brevity and forcefulness of expression.
What both versions are unable to do, however, is to communicate the beach resort’s rules and regulations effectively and in a manner that would speak well of the resort management and sit in well with the beach resort’s guests. The truth of the matter is that the original text of the poster is too stark, too aggressive, and too tendentious to be posted at all; its stream-of-consciousness remarks clearly give the picture of a tired, exasperated resort manager who has forgotten that it’s his duty to remain pleasant and customer-oriented even if the resort’s customers can get so unpleasant and hard-headed at times. Indeed, the poster sounds nothing less than an order from an irate military camp commander—a big no-no if you are in business, and even more so if you are in the hospitality and tourism business.
The challenge to us therefore is to more than just improve the English of that poster. We have to strip it of the emotionalism, crankiness, and peremptoriness of the writer of the original text. We have to make it sound much more pleasant and reader-friendly—smiling, no less—so that the guests would more willingly accept its message and act on it positively. In short, the resort management should be able to actually post that poster in its premises without riling or raising the eyebrows of its visitors and guests—and, of course, with more than just a fair hope of getting understood and getting the desired results.
For this reason, I must say that both entries to the contest—although admirable in improving the English of the beach poster—have not made the grade from the standpoint of making that beach poster truly communicative, audience-oriented, and customer-oriented. I am therefore announcing that the text improvement contest for that beach poster is still open. My promise to the winner--the writer of the best of the first five communication-oriented rewrites of the text of this poster--still holds: an autographed copy of Give Your English the Winning Edge, the third book in my English-usage trilogy that's scheduled to roll off the press this month.
So go get back to your word processors and start writing to communicate!
