Today's blog is all about grammar, which seems like an unlikely subject for real estate. Yet, one of an agent's many duties is writing those all-important descriptions of properties, the ones where we're supposed to both accurately describe the premises and capture the imaginations of potential buyers. Clichés abound, and originality can have its problems. Errors slip in more often than not.
I'm a former English teacher raised in a family of English teachers, so I'm hard-wired to be picky. My own pet peeves are the word "separate" spelled "seperate" and the modifier "unique" itself modified. We see the phrase "truly unique" used frequently, as if some property is more than one-of-a-kind.
The Bainbridge Review famously ran an ad for a beach-side property that featured "all day sun on a south-facing dick," which makes you wonder what the neighbors thought, and if the feature would stay with the house--hopefully, not. I've seen ads for mini-tutors, teachers short on patience, no doubt. And, one home was listed as having "gentile" style, much to the agent's chagrin.
The National Association of Realtors insists that the word "realtors" should be both capitalized and followed by a trademark symbol, which usually doesn't happen. Furthermore, many realtors pronounce the word "real-a-tors," which seems wrong on many levels. But the issue I can't get around is whether we should hyphenate "real estate agents." The standard journalistic style books, including those of the venerable New York Times, require compound modifiers to be hyphenated. Ergo, it should be "real-estate agents." I suspect none of us uses that form.
Clearly it's a slow day in real estate, and this Realtor®, looking at the rain, is glad to be a real-estate agent who's staying indoors today.
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