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The more alert you are to the key words used and the explicit claims made in ads, the more aware you will become of your own use of words and ideas.

After getting attention (Hi) and establishing confidence (Trust Me), advertising stimulates desire by promising benefits: a pleasure to be gained, or a pain to be avoided.

The main selling point (the body, the content, the substance) of most ads is often made up of claims explicitly about the product, or implicitly suggesting how it will benefit the audience.

Explicit claims, product-centered, are discussed in this section. Implicit suggestions, especially about audience-centered intangible benefits, are discussed in the next section.

In advertising, the explicit claims about a product's merits can be put into a dozen major categories: Quality, Quantity. Beauty, Efficiency, Scarcity, Novelty, Stability, Reliability, Simplicity. Utility, Rapidity, and Safety.

In contrast to these limited and predictable ad claims, expository writers often have more difficulty in defining their purpose, their thesis, and their key ideas.

Key words, as used here, refer to both the proper nouns and the common nouns and verbs related to the product. All writers need to have a basic working vocabulary specifically related to their topic. Writers first need to do their homework by gathering basic facts, ideas, and words.

Intensifiers (including superlatives, hyperboles, exaggerations, and puffery) are often used by ad writers deliberately to hype the product. Expository writers sometimes use other common intensifiers, often inappropriately.

Qualifiers in ads are often required by law to prevent overstatements. In contrast, academic writing tends to over-qualify from self-imposed caution.