Lorem Ibsen

  

Print ads, for a great many in the industry, represent the de facto pinnacle of communication. Ergo, whatever you need to say, you should be able to say it in two dimensions.  Spread out flat on terra firma (or on the kitchen table), between puddles of maple syrup and used spoons. Television commercials are not as pure as print ads, per se. 

But the most common source of agita concerns how to fill in the remaining copy blocks – those hefty paragraphs towards the bottom of the page, where you're supposed to explicate the headline even if it means employing a rhetorical non sequitur. It’s a balancing acta, I guess. In the early stages of any ad’s life, art directors take it upon themselves to fill in the space left over by their partners, toiling over every last syllable, wishing they could copy the great ads of yore verbatim. In a pinch for time, especially since they aren’t working pro bon, many resort to some sort of computer generated fake Latin. While admittedly much better than whatever bona fide English usually replaces it, we could, as a business do better. 

Would it be so hard to write corpus copy in Latin? The only homo sapiens who say it’s a dead language are those who refuse to learn it. They are contributing to the tongue’s deadness, set in their ways, unwilling to acquire useful knowledge, yearning instead for a sizable per diem. Having studied Latin in high school for two strenuous years, I fully understand the status quo. 

Latin would imbue advertisements with a sense of realism that they often lack – tabula rasa would be more desirable than whatever trendy nonsense is in there now. If you really want to know about the ad ad nauseum, what toothpaste to use or what dogfood to buy, you should do like our ancestors did and learn Latin. If it was good enough for Imperator Augustus, it should certainly be adequate for you. The headline will still semper be in English, but that’s as clear as things should get. 

 

It wasn’t that long ago when the Catholic Church held services in toto like the Ancient Romans. People are always saying how the United States of America is just like Rome, mirroring its postmortem and barbarian-induced rigor mortis. With our gladiatorial street fights, idol worship, and unhealthy obsession with sandals, we might as well be that ancient empire, and vice versa.

Although, as president I’d veto any request from a senator wishing to wear a toga. Cui bono from seeing Mitch McConnell dressed that way? 

Nemo.