The Guardian - a national newspaper perhaps best-known for spelling errors - has taken a swipe at agents' details and language in a column giving seven tips to how to talk like an estate agent.
It claims agents communicate in a dialect renowned for its strangulated syntax, peculiar vocabulary and breathtaking insouciance, dancing on a rhetorical knife-edge between salesmanship and fraudulence.
Its seven tips are:
1. Euphemise relentlessly - compact instead of tiny, in an imposing building for a brutalist tower block, and an opportunity to put your own stamp on" meaning a disgusting wreck.
2. Use the magic get-out clause - the paper says frequent use of in our opinion" insulates agents from subsequent legal complaint.
3. Accentuate the positive - especially by using the words benefits from...
4. Try to sound formal - using pompous phrases like in the case of a flat that "offers ample space to maximise your lifestyle requirements".
5. If in doubt, add "-ed" - as in, a two-bedroomed flat, which to The Guardian sounds better than a plain old two-bedroom flat.
6 Be geographically optimistic - the paper claims this means cases where homes in locations termed as Muswell Hill actually extend way beyond the M25.
7. Finally, employ cliches that no one can possibly contradict - well, maybe the paper has a point here with the use of "ever popular" and "light and airy".
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Comments
How boringly 80's....when will so called intelligent journalists learn that until buyers start paying our wages we have to impress the people we are selling the house for..it scares me sometimes how thick people are allowed such power.
Hah! Harsh, but just possibly fair....
The irony of the Guardian mocking the way estate agents present themselves in writing is just too much! They didn't think this one through.
The Grauniad criticising the way estate agents act and speak brilliant! I think us estate agents could come up with a pretty good list of clichs and stereotypes regarding the journalist profession it wouldnt make great reading. As usual, estate agents = easy target for a bashing. It's getting pretty tiresome.
Journos criticizing how people write. What next drunks criticizing alcoholics
Although I do wonder sometimes if some agents believe their garb actually fools anyone.
Two of our tenants are journalists for the Guardian and nearly every email has spelling mistakes, wrong use of punctuation & incorrect use of words... Go to the Frontline club in the west end for a drink and see what kind of idiots write stuff in papers you pay good money for. Often not even having reliable/solid evidence for the "facts" they write and if so half of this evidence is made up by them or their "sources". Pot calling the kettle black springs to mind....