Shamed by your English?

Or, "Does your English let you down?". These are alternative headlines to the longest-running ad in newspaper history. It was placed in national newspapers, often on the front page, in 1963, and has been appearing regularly ever since. The text claims that the answer to the problem posed is to take a correspondence course in speaking and writing from a company based in Cheshire.

It was, and still is, hugely successful: the course has been taken by 400,000 people. The original ad was based on one written—rather well, it has to be said—by an American copywriter and has remained virtually unchanged; the publishers tried different versions, but none proved as effective as this one. It is, quite properly, headed Advertisement, but clearly many readers take it as editorial because it reads like a newspaper article and uses typefaces matching the newspapers in which it was published.

Perhaps that is a little bit sly, but it is hard not to admire the ad, which is basically a simple and honest one for a worthwhile product, and has outlived the greatest marketing campaigns of our time. It would be interesting to know how much the content of the course has been updated over the years; it may not have changed very much, for a piece of good English written half a century ago—like the ad itself—will still read well, give or take a few changes in fashion.