Question: What’s wrong with President Obama’s slogan,
“Forward.”
Punctuation
Nerds Stopped by Obama Slogan, 'Forward.'
From Both Sides of the Aisle, a Question: Is
Ending It With a Period Weird?
By CAROL E. LEE [Since
many of my readers do not read the Wall Street Journal, I thought it
better to include the entire article to give them an idea of how much fun it is
to read the Journal. If the editors of the Journal object, I will
withdraw it immediately. My purpose is
to increase Journal readership. Rays.]
The.
Obama. Campaign. Slogan. Is. Causing. Grammarians. Whiplash.
"Forward."
is the culprit. It was chosen to reflect the direction Mr. Obama promises to
take the country if re-elected. It also is designed to implicitly convey the
opposite: that likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney would set the nation in reverse.
Obama
campaign slogan
Simple
enough. Except the moment seven characters became eight, things got
complicated. Period. Even for some in the president's orbit, the added
punctuation slams the brakes on a word supposed to convey momentum.
"It's
like 'forward, now stop,' " said Austan Goolsbee, the former chairman of
the National Economic Council who still advises the Obama campaign. He added,
"It could be worse. It could be 'Forward' comma," which would make it
raise the question: "and now what?"
The
president signed off on his own slogan, but evidently isn't sold.
"Forward! Period. Full stop," he has joked to his campaign staff,
according to an Obama adviser.
On
that, if on nothing else, Mr. Obama has bipartisan support.
"It's
sort of a buzz kill," said Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.).
The
period was a subject of a spirited debate as Mr. Obama's senior advisers and
outside consultants spent hours in a conference room at their Chicago campaign
headquarters deliberating over the perfect slogan, according to an adviser who
was in attendance.
Does
a period add emphasis? Yes! Does it undermine the sense of the word? Maybe!
President
Obama campaigning in Florida this month. He has joked with staffers about the
slogan's punctuation.
David
Axelrod, the president's longtime messaging guru, is a champion of the period.
"There's some finality to it," Mr. Axelrod said. For those who think
it stops "forward" in its tracks, he has a suggestion: "Tell
them just to put two more dots on it, and it'll seem like it keeps on
going."
The
period debate hasn't been confined to the upper echelons of the Obama campaign.
Politicians, grammarians and designers who brand people and products have
noticed it, too.
"There's
been some speculation that the period really gives the feeling of something ending
rather than beginning," said Catherine Pages, an art director in
Washington, D.C.
In
1992, George H.W. Bush's line, "Who do you trust?" generated chatter
about the use of "who" versus "whom." Dwight Eisenhower's
1952 slogan "I like Ike" is clearly a sentence, but didn't include a
period. George W. Bush's "Yes, America Can" slogan included a comma;
Mr. Obama's "Yes We Can" chant four years later did not.
Meanwhile,
the title of the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney, "Restore Our
Future," seems to bend the rules of space and time, if not grammar.
Those
who brandish red pens for a living are divided on whether Mr. Obama's campaign
slogan passes muster.
"It
would be quite a stretch to say it's grammatically correct," said Mignon
Fogarty, author of "Grammar Girl's 101 Troublesome Words You'll Master in
No Time." "You could say it's short for 'we're moving forward.' But
really it's not a sentence."
The
only single words that properly end with a period are verbs, Ms. Fogarty added,
or interjections such as "wow."
George
Lakoff, a linguistics professor at University of California Berkeley who is
well-known in Democratic circles, has a different verdict. He says that the
slogan respects the period's proper use because "Forward." is an
imperative sentence.
"You
can look at the period as adding a sense of finality, making a strong
statement: Forward. Period. And no more," Mr. Lakoff said. "Whether
that's effective is another question."
Joining
the Obama campaign is the alternative rock band fun., which added a period on
forming in 2008. In a written statement, two of the group's founders, Jack
Antonoff and Andrew Dost, described the punctuation as "our way of
sedating the word fun. We love how quick and sharp 'fun' is, but in no way do
we intend to give people the impression that we're going to walk into rooms
doing back flips."
On its page-one nameplate and elsewhere, The
Wall Street Journal maintains its period, a holdover from the 1800s. No one at
the paper knows why the Journal kept it when other papers gradually dropped
their traditional periods, a spokeswoman said.
In
presidential campaigns, discussions over slogans often focus on pre-emptive
damage control. "We'd sit around the conference rooms and have these
discussions," said Steve Hildebrand, a deputy campaign manager for Mr.
Obama's 2008 campaign. "You wonder if they're going to catch on; you
wonder if people are going to make fun of them."
Shortly
after the 2012 line was unveiled in April, late-night talk show host Jay Leno
said, "That's a good message for Obama. He's telling voters, whatever you
do don't look back at all those promises I made. Just look forward."
Mr.
Romney has called the "Forward." slogan "absurd," and has
seized on it to argue Mr. Obama's policies would take the country "forward
over a cliff."
Mr.
Romney's slogan, "Believe in America" (no period), has its share of
critics as well. "I think that's about as close to a standard slogan as
you can possibly get," said Fred Davis, a Republican media consultant.
Rep.
Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee and a former public-relations manager, said he prefers the period
over an exclamation point or nothing at all.
"Forward
without a period leaves open the question: 'In what direction?' " Mr.
Israel said. "But that's just the old, frustrated, former public-relations
executive in me."
It
is possible the president isn't the best judge of his own marketing. During his
successful 2008 run, Mr. Obama told his campaign staff he wasn't sold on the
slogan "Change We Can Believe In," according to a book written by
close aide David Plouffe.
He
also thought the campaign's signature symbol—a red, white and blue rising
sun—was "cheesy," recalled longtime Obama adviser Robert Gibbs.
The
period has mysteriously been dropped in several recent Obama campaign ads.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no particular reason behind
the omission. "Stay on your toes—anything could happen," he said.
"Do not be surprised if we introduce a semicolon."
Wall Street Journal, July 31, 2012. Internet.
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