Lilach Alkony wonders about the difference between “hard sales” and “hard sells.”

The noun phrase hard sell is a U.S. coinage dating from the 1950s. It means “aggressive salesmanship or advertising.” An example is the late night “infomercial” that keeps pounding the viewer with “…and wait, there’s more!”

Hard sell can be used as an adjective and a verb, as well as a noun. The OED hyphenates the word as hard-sell and offers these examples:

1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 13 Nov. 662/3 One does not see any examples..of what is called ‘hard-sell’ advertising.

1961 Economist 14 Jan. 114/2 The need for the ‘hard sell’ is evident.

1963 Guardian 16 Nov. 14/7 It is difficult to hard-sell the honest song the way they do the contemporary counterfeit.

The phrase “hard sales,” on the other hand, can have various interpretations.

It can mean simply “sales transactions that are difficult to achieve,” as in this headline:

Making the Hard Sales, Your Career Depends on It

Some headline writers, however, confuse “hard sales” with “hard sell”:

Sales Training Tip – 10 Reasons Why Hard Sales Tactics Never Work

The wording of the first reason suggests that the headline was probably not written by the author:

People hate being sold to: hard sell will bring out the worst in people. When aggressive sales techniques are used this will prompt the prospective buyer to be aggressive as well and act negatively to the sales person. Pretty soon they are ready to argue with you and you know the sale is completely lost.

A web search does turn up many examples of “hard sales” used with the meaning of “hard sell.” It seems to me that if the intended meaning is “aggressive selling,” then the established, unambiguous term is to be preferred.

Watching an episode of The Good Wife the other evening, I was puzzled by a lawyer character’s use of the word invert.

A witness had been murdered. The lawyer was trying to prove that the witness list had been leaked because the last two letters of the witness’s name were “inverted” on the official list and were also “inverted” on a note written by the killer.

I completely lost track of the story as I tried to figure out how the letters in what was presumably a typed word could have been turned upside down. Then the camera showed the list and I saw that the last two letters, e-r, had been reversed to r-e. Ah, I thought, reversed! I could turn my attention back to the story.

The experience got me thinking about the two words.

invert: 1533, from M.Fr. invertir, from L. invertere “turn upside down, turn about,” from in- “in, on” + vertere “to turn”

reverse: c.1300, from O.Fr. revers “reverse, cross,” from L. reversus, pp. of revertere “turn back”

In some contexts “inverted” does mean “reversed.”For example, an” inverted sentence” is one in which the verb changes its usual place and comes before the subject: Before me lay the ruined sword.

An “inverted syllogism” is one in which the statement “All A are B” invites the conclusion “All B are A.”

On the other hand, “inverted commas,” another term for “quotation marks,” is so termed because opening quotation marks (in some fonts anyway) are upside-down commas.

Depending on the typeface, opening and closing quotation marks may be identical in form (called “vertical”, “straight”, or “typewriter” quotation marks), or they may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (”typographic” or, colloquially, “curly” quotation marks). The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe, and similar to the prime symbol. –Wikipedia

The OED lists 13 definitions with numerous sub-definitions for reverse, including “invert.” It gives 10 for invert, including “reverse.”

I’m sure that not every viewer boggled at the lawyer’s use of the word inverted in the Good Wife episode, but I doubt that I was the only one who did. It’s probably a good idea to think about possible ambiguity when using these words.

Language can be a slippery beast, with the meanings of words changing over time. This can be a great source of confusion, especially if a word ends up with two distinct, even contradictory meanings. One example of this occurs with the word fulsome.

Fulsome now has two separate meanings and it isn’t always clear which meaning a writer intended. The original sense of the word, from as far back as 1250 according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was, simply, “abundance”. To give fulsome praise was to praise lavishly.

Some time after this the word began to take on a more negative sense of excess. It came to mean “obnoxiously full” rather than just full. To give fulsome praise now meant to give insincere or exaggerated praise.

More recently, the word has gone full circle and become more widely used in its original sense : abundant without any negative connotation. People describe praise as “fulsome” and imply no criticism. The problem is that the intended meaning of “fulsome apology” or “fulsome praise” isn’t clear. The word may be being used in a complimentary sense, or in an insulting one.

The Oxford Dictionary maintains that the negative sense of the word is the correct one. It says :

Although the earliest sense of fulsome was ‘abundant’, this is now regarded by many as incorrect; the correct meaning today is said to be ‘excessively flattering’. This gives rise to ambiguity: the possibility that while for one speaker fulsome praise will be a genuine compliment, for others it will be interpreted as an insult.

However, this seems out of step with much common usage. To avoid the ambiguity, perhaps the best approach is to avoid the word altogether and find a clearer alternative. If you choose to use it, be aware of the ambiguity.

Reader Arthur writes:

I was reading an article about a photographer. It was clear that the writer rated this photographer’s work and legacy very highly. He went on to say that

“It is impossible to underestimate his impact…”

I feel that ‘overestimate’ would have been more appropriate, but others are not so sure. What do you think?

Of course the writer meant “overestimate.”

estimate: verb, To value (subjectively); to attribute value to; to appreciate the worth of; to esteem, hold in (higher or lower) estimation.

overestimate:   trans. To attribute too high an estimated value to (a numerical quantity); to estimate (something) to be larger, better, or more important than it really is; (also) to hold in too high estimation.

under-estimate: verb, To rate or rank too low; to undervalue.
Note, OED hyphenates under-estimate. Merriam-Webster shows it as one word, underestimate.

Judging from a quick web cruise, the error of substituting underestimate for overestimate, especially in the construction beginning “it is impossible to” is widespread.

Here are just three examples I found online:

It’s impossible to underestimate how important George Strait was to country music in the mid-1980s. He’s credited with single-handedly saving the entire genre…

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Roberto Rossellini made three films that helped to lay the foundations of modern cinema: “Rome Open City” (1945), “Paisan” (1946) and “Germany Year Zero” (1948). It’s almost impossible to underestimate the importance of these movies, both for the impact that their startling realism had on the audiences and filmmakers of the time and for the influence they continue to exert on directors.

It is impossible to underestimate how important it is to have a home insurance policy. Unless you have an interest in luxury yachts, your home will be the most expensive purchase you will make in your lifetime.

In each example, the topic being discussed–George Strait, the war movies, and home insurance–are clearly seen as being of great value. While it might be possible to underestimate their value, the intention is to point out that it is impossible to overestimate their value.

I did find one example of underestimate being used correctly:

At this point it’s pretty much impossible to underestimate Palin.

The context was a comment about the likelihood of Sarah Palin’s becoming President. The writer expressed the opinion that Palin has no chance at all. For that reason one can overestimate her chances, but it’s not possible to underestimate them.

This is a guest post by Don Lee. If you want to write for Daily Writing Tips check the guidelines here.

When I write about classical music for a general audience, I try to reassure readers, if only implicitly, that they don’t have to understand specialized music terms in order to enjoy the music itself.

Where writers are concerned, I expect more.

Although I’m glad to see writers borrow expressions that can resonate beyond classical music, a misunderstanding can lead to writing that’s slightly out of tune.

Among the music terms that can be especially troublesome is crescendo. For example, take this metaphorical use in a recent wire service story:

Klug, meanwhile, is making his third Olympics—a string that began when snowboarding was introduced in 1998 and reached its crescendo on a sunsplashed day in Park City, Utah, eight years ago.

Here’s the problem: a crescendo is not a destination; it’s the process of getting there. It does not mean “loud”; a crescendo marks a passage that is “growing louder.” A musician (or snowboarder) reaching a crescendo is only at the beginning of the climb to the top.

It’s trickier to explain misunderstandings of another troublesome term, orchestrate. In the original sense, orchestration is the act–by composer or arranger–of assigning the multiple lines in a composition to the various instruments of the orchestra. This design gives a piece its sonic “color.”

More often we see orchestrate used in a metaphorical sense, as expressed in the secondary definition from The American Heritage Dictionary:

To arrange or control the elements of, as to achieve a desired overall effect: orchestrated a successful political campaign.

When you’re looking for a word that packs more potency than “coordinate,” “orchestrate” can be an effective choice. But be careful not to add too much baggage.

President Obama[‘s]… allies are moaning about ‘orchestrated’ protests at health care town halls that target Democratic lawmakers back home for summer break.

Here, “orchestration” becomes a synonym for “artifice”; the act begins to sound slightly devious. Those town hall protests didn’t grow spontaneously out of grass roots outrage; they were (gasp) orchestrated!

In the following headlines, all found on the web, the practice becomes downright conspiratorial:

Did the USA Orchestrate the Mammoth Asian Tsunami?
Did the Illuminati Orchestrate 9/11?
Did Barney Frank Orchestrate the Bank Meltdown?
Did British Intelligence Orchestrate Princess Diana’s Death?
Did Britney Spears’ Manager Orchestrate Breakdown?

Now imagine a headline like this:

Did Saint-Saëns Orchestrate “Carnival of the Animals” Intending Double Basses to Evoke Lumbering Elephants?

You bet he did—as you probably can tell even if you don’t know the piece. No hidden agenda there. While it’s not as easy to notice the orchestrator’s hand in most other compositions, that doesn’t make the effort deceitful. Yet somehow the conspiracy theorists (and their co-conspirators) have distorted the term to the point where “orchestration” sounds like the work of a conniving puppet master, rather than an artful alignment of varying elements.

Poet Sidney Lanier famously described music as “love in search of a word.” When writers are at their best, words can return the favor.

Don Lee, an independent media producer, editor and consultant, is former executive producer of the public radio music program Performance Today.