Often, in the course of a day, I have to write copy for a client and talk up the benefits and features of their service lines. For example, if they have a Level 3 trauma center emergency room, that is a good thing. It means that they can handle any shit thrown their way. So I might write that "Sample Hospital's Emergency Department is the only Level 3 Trauma Center in the southeast counties." Maybe after that I add a line explaining why that's good.
And then that goes to the client, who decides that they don't want to say that. I can only presume that is because what I have written is true, and easy to read, and possibly even distinctive. Instead, they want to talk up their ED, which essentially means that they add a bunch of hyphenated (when they think to hyphenate them, that is, because often they don't feel the need to hyphenate a series of compound modifiers, either, since apparently the head of PR and Marketing at large healthcare companies are not required to be in any way literate or professional, which would, come to think of it, explain why the e-mails they send me are also often written in 14 pt. pink Lucida Handwriting) compound modifiers that are absolutely the same as every other piece of ED copy in the market.
So then my job is to review that new, client-supplied copy, and it always reads "The Sample Hospital Emergency Department is staffed with board certified physicians paramedics and staff equipped to handle both urgent and minor emergencies providing exceptional care and quality response to the southeast counties since 1986."
And I read that, and drink coffee, and want to compile a list of questions this sentence raises, including:
1. "Board-certified physicians and staff"? As opposed to what, honestly? Are there any Emergency Departments out there that are staffed with monkeys? Non-board-certified monkeys? When was the last time you visited an Emergency Department to find only angry monkeys with very little medical training?
2. Who is unable to handle even "minor" emergencies? And what's a minor emergency, anyway? Wouldn't that be, like, a bee sting? Don't we also run giant, expensive campaigns that tell people to not go to the ED for that stuff and instead they need to go to Urgent Care? Because when you are sitting on the hard plastic chairs of the ED with your bee sting, and men with gunshot wounds and pregnant ladies keep walking in, don't you think that they're probably going to be taken care of before you? I don't know. I'm just guessing here, since I would never be stupid enough to go to an ED with a bee sting, unless it was causing my face to turn blue and my hands to fill with blood.
3. Is anyone really impressed by someone existing since 1986? We're not talking years and years ago. 1986 is not, sadly, the year that we invented flying cars. It is not a year known for anything, really, except maybe the Challenger explosion. If the answer to that is seriously yes, I am going to add a line to my business cards that reads, "Since 1981."
Oh, well, according to Wikipedia, in 1986 a bus crashed and killed the bassist for Metallica. So I guess that's probably what most potential ED patients think of when they read that line: They've cared for people around here since Cliff Burton died? Dang!
4. What do you really want me to do with this sentence? I can add a couple of commas, but really, it should just be set on fire.
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