Words matter

If you’ve read even a little of my website you can probably tell I love language, words, and putting it all together to tell a (hopefully compelling and or entertaining) story. I love it so much, I wrote an entire chapter about the importance of language in a 2019 book I co-authored with Faith James, Ladies, Power Up Your Brand: The Women Entrepreneur's Guide to Getting Paid to be Bold, Brilliant and Unapologetically You.

In fact, I have loved to express myself through writing since I was a little kid, and was fortunate enough that my father was a teacher and encouraged me by enrolling me in theater camps, speech clubs, spelling bees and debate to provide outlets to research, write and speak in front of crowds.

My love of language is one of the most motivating reasons I got into advertising. Originally, I wanted to be a copywriter, but quickly learned that writing a few words is much harder than writing many - and realized giving up words was too much of a compromise for me. Account service and strategy was more up my alley, allowing me to write as much as I wanted and editing down to what is needed in briefs, reports, thought leadership, etc.

So you can imagine my fascination with my own kids’ developing language skills, and how honed in I am to what they say and write. At 8, my twins are well own their way to language mastery…but not before I document a few of their most entertaining “language misses” we can all look back on and have a good laugh about someday.

“Soupcase” - as in, “Mom, I know you’re traveling this week - have you packed your soupcase?”

“Furnace” - “Mom, I really want a hot lunch today. Can you pack some mac and cheese in my furnace? (e.g., thermos)”

“Food service” - “Can we get food service at the hotel?” (e.g., room service)

“Pumpquins” - “I can’t wait for Halloween so we can go pick pumpquins at the farm.”

Oh, to be a kid again! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have redlining to do on some homework papers :)