A Companion to Composition by Hugh Rank http://webserve.govst.edu/pa | HOME |

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The more you are aware of what has been omitted from an ad. or downplayed within it, the more sensitive you are as a writer about your own assumptions about the audience and your own omissions of material.

The basic selection/omission process in writing necessarily omits much more than it includes.

All writers have to make assumptions about the knowledge and attitudes of their target audience.

Based on these assumptions, writers normally omit unneeded information, not relevant to the purpose, or of lesser interest, trivial.

In exposition, writers can reduce relevant omissions by using an outline or a checklist.

However, unlike exposition, persuasion involves a transaction, including a promising of benefits and a response.

It is prudent to expect that persuaders will attempt to downplay the "bad," to omit any disadvantages or problems in the transaction.

Omissions in ads are hard to detect because there's literally nothing there. But omissions can be discovered by systematically looking for potential bad effects and their concealed causes, using a traditional pattern of causality (maker, material, plan, purpose).

Within an ad, sometime information included can be downplayed by degree, placement, or indirect language (such as euphemisms, circumlocution and jargon).

Omissions and disclosures are relevant to many complex legal, political, and ethical issues. Omissions and downplaying of relevant information can distort and deceive. In response, some "disclosure laws," require ads to put labels and warnings on some potentially dangerous or harmful products.