I was flipping through the colour magazine of a weekend newspaper and I was amazed at the number of ads using tortured words and misspellings. Here are three reason why I think advertisers just shouldn't do it.

1. I really think it's counterproductive. They're all so lame and amateurish. I mean Salebration! PLEASE! If there's one thing worse than a bad spoken pun it's a tortured written one. If you have to stoop to such depths what you're saying is there isn't much that the product or service has that's worth writing about. I can't even remember what this ad was for.
2. Literacy among the whole population - not just young people - seems to be less than ideal. Partly this is a result of lacklustre education, partly because for some people English is a second language they've had to learn late in life and partly it's because the written word - in papers, on billboards and websites - is tortured and misspelt. Why do we write LITE and TONITE? What was wrong with light and tonight? Written words in public spaces tend to have a de facto authority and people accept what they see as being correct usage. What a pity it isn't!
3. Professionalism. If you want people to take you and your products or services seriously then silly language gimmicks won't do it. You can still be clever, amusing, eye-catching and thought provoking and use the language properly.

In the spirit of if you can't beat them...

I've coined a new word to describe these horrible ads, which I think describes them perfectly and uses their own tortured logic - DAGVERTISING. (If you don't know what a dag is check here)