PLEASE:You can make your writing powerful

My shampoo contains provitamins. My window cleaner boasts that it has ammonia-D. The makers of my mint candies invested millions of dollars to make sure I know their product contains Retsyn. And a can of shaving cream in my house proudly proclaims that it contains allantoin.

And we wonder why the language in general and kids' attention span for learning language in particular are going down the drain.

As you may have guessed, all these wonderful product ingredients — most of them household names — have one thing in common: They all mean exactly nada to the average person. The makers of Certs may have seen fit to spend years and millions of dollars pounding home the message that their candies contain Retsyn, but in my recollection, they invested neither a penny nor a second to explain what Retsyn is. Ditto for ammonia-D. We all know what ammonia is, and we're just left to assume that ammonia-d must be even better. Double ditto for "pro" vitamins.

I started thinking about all this stuff as I was looking at the word "allantoin" on a shaving cream can at the same time that I was listening to a recorded voice tell my answering machine that I had just won a trip for two to fabulous Las Vegas.

It struck me that we're so inundated with confusing, conflicting, manipulative and meaningless words that it's tempting not to not pay attention at all. For example, the recorded voice may have been saying, "You have just won a trip," but my ear heard, "We want your money and we're trying to trick you out of it."

This is a simple and rational act of self-defense. It frees our brains up for more important matters such as the fate of Britney and K-Fed or heavy theological questions like, "What would Lisa Simpson do?"