Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig

finished lumber suitable for making furniture at home. Prepare an advertisement to show how simple it is to make tables and chairs at home with their plans and their specially cut lumber. Illustrate by giving the plans and working directions for making a useful table, showing how easy it is with their specially cut lumber. Set an attractive price on the lumber necessary to make this table. Sum up by exploiting a book of plans, which may be had for the asking. =Exercise 292= The following paragraph is taken from Professor Scott's _Theory of Advertising_. What is the subject of the paragraph? Is there a topic sentence? By what plan is the paragraph developed? Many of those who use illustrations for their advertisements follow the philosophy of the Irish boy who said that he liked to stub his toe because it felt so good when it stopped hurting. Many of us are unable to see how the boy had made any gain after it was all over, but he was satisfied, and that was sufficient. The philosophic disciples of the Irish boy are found in advertisers who have certain things to dispose of which will not do certain harmful things. First they choose an illustration which will make you believe that what they have to sell is just what you do not want, and then in the text they try to overcome this false impression and to show you that what they have to offer is not so bad after all. Most of us are unable to see how the advertiser has gained, even if he has succeeded in giving us logical proof that his goods are not so bad as we were at first led to think. We are not logically inclined, and we take the illustration and the text, and we combine the two. The best that the text can do is to destroy the evil effect of the illustration. Of course, when we read in the text that the illustration does not correctly represent the goods, we ought to discard the illustration entirely and think only of the text, but, unfortunately, we are not constructed in that way. The impression made by the illustration and that made by the text fuse and form a whole which is the result formed by these two elements. Write paragraphs on each of the following: