Gasoline for clearly smoother acceleration

You couldn’t ignore this billboard. It loomed over an expressway entrance where it assaulted millions of drivers each week.

First you saw the phrase:
“Gasoline for clearly smoother acceleration”

And in small print, you saw the sentence:
“Only Amoco Ultimate ® is crystal clear.”

What have these advertisers actually promised?

If an idea isn’t in a sentence (that is, with subject and predicate), they haven’t promised you anything. But when advertisers use enticing phrases, you may believe that they have.

So I think that advertising is worth analyzing. Such analysis has been called, by my friend Frank Pope, “forensic grammar.” There is, in fact, a field called "forensic linguistics."

It starts, in my opinion, with recognizing a sentence. That's a skill we should all teach our children--for their own protection.

Flesch Reading Ease: 61.6
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 7.1