I saw this product headline in a Gardener’s Supply catalog that my wife received a couple of days ago.
Problem:
The hyphen absolutely does not belong in this title.
Explanation:
This simply looks stupid.
The headline writer was trying to be clever by writing a traditional word (“Revolutionary”) in an untraditional way (“Revolution-ary”).
However, there were two problems with this attempt at cleverness:
- The product name — Gardener’s Revolution(TM) Planter — does not appear until the end of the second sentence of the paragraph beneath the headline, a sub-headline, and a “Gardener’s Supply Exclusive” label.
- Given that “Gardener’s Revolution” is tagged with a trademark (“TM”) symbol, common legal opinion advises against joining part of the trademark phrase (“Revolution”) with anything else (in this case, “-ary”).
In other words, the attempt to tie the concept “Revolutionary” with the product name “Gardener’s Revolution” by putting the oddly hyphenated word “Revolution-ary” in the headline is weak, and this attempt weakens future claims of trademark protection.
Solution:
“A Revolutionary Way to Grow Tomatoes”