Adverticle

[chaggle]

Like my new word? It's a cross between an advert and an article.

This one is about herbal medicine. I guess you just can't say in a proper advert that Wormwood Cures Bad Tummies - you would have to be able to prove it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/we...-disorder.html

Nervous of the traditional cure – such infections are conventionally treated with a broad spectrum antibiotic – she was recommended instead to an alternative therapist. One week after her first visit to Susan Koten, a renowned nutritionist in Essex, and I could not believe how well she looked. Having explored every other medical option for my own stomach troubles, I decided to try a herbalist myself.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Susan transformed my life. She identified that I too had contracted Giardia lamblia. Once infected, symptoms can occur within 24 hours as it multiplies and starts excreting and secreting waste products into your body. These by-products can trigger an allergic response, causing hypersensitivity to certain foods as well as a host of other problems, including nausea and depression.

Susan gave me a herbal tincture – at £18 a bottle – to take three times a day for a week, the main ingredient of which was wormwood. I felt better almost immediately. When I returned a week later for a check-up, she decided that I needed another course to be sure the parasite was completely gone.

And at the bottom of the article:

* Susan Koten practices at the Willow Herbal Centre, Harold Wood, Essex (01708 381478, www.willowherbalcentre.co.uk)

ETA should have checked - adverticle is already in use.

[Admin]

Adverticle is a good word for this sort of pap though.

I've mentioned this before but this type of story read like fairy tales. The damsel in distress, the baddie (usually a real doctor or medicine itself), and the knight in shining armour (the alternative therapist who cures everything).

I don't know how the papers get away with printing these stories as factual when they are obviously advertising puff pieces.

Here's another example: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/...ged-me-forever

It's printed as a factual story of an NDE (it's actually an OBE it's describing) leading on to some scientist becoming a psychic...

But it includes details of the woman's organization that's set up to 'help others' - complete with affiliation program.


I'd love to know the rationale for the papers publishing these adverticles - perhaps they charge?

[Matt]

Good word but I think Advertorial has a head-start and a similar enough meaning.

[Croydon Bob]

I'd love to know the rationale for the papers publishing these adverticles - perhaps they charge?

Magazines have always done this sort of thing. Respectable ones that you can buy in WH Smiths. The details will vary but could be: You pay for three issues worth of one page adverts and they'll throw in a positive review of your product/film in the issue with your first advert. Or: You pay for a one page advert and they will let you have a three page article that you write yourself. I used to write for a high circulation publication that is still on sale and does this sort of thing. It was/is published by one of the big names.

Local papers are low-staff low-cost and desperate for material. I used to write Press Releases designed to be cut'n'pasted straight into the paper. It often worked, but sometimes backfired spectacularly.

It doesn't shock me to see evidence that suggests that even the broadsheets do similar.

[Harryprice]

It's printed as a factual story of an NDE (it's actually an OBE it's describing) leading on to some scientist becoming a psychic...

Some would aregue that an NDE is just a particular kind of OBE and that they have the same cause.

[Janot]

Susan gave me a herbal tincture – at £18 a bottle –

Wrong verb, methinks

she decided that I needed another course to be sure the parasite was completely gone.

Surprise surprise

[panama]

So drink vermouth. Go on, do the research and see why it exists. Betya Martini is cheaper than the "cure". (Actually as a publican I know that!)

[alganbagerap]

Didn't absinthe originally contain wormwood? It may well still. Certainly cures stress. Two glasses and I'm as relaxed as a very relaxed thing with no legs.

[bindeweede]

Didn't absinthe originally contain wormwood? It may well still. Certainly cures stress. Two glasses and I'm as relaxed as a very relaxed thing with no legs.

Absinthe? No, I won't say it.

[panama]

Didn't absinthe originally contain wormwood?

Yup. Still does, I think.

From Wikipedia

Absinthe (English pronunciation: /ˈæbˌsɪnθ/) is historically described as a distilled, highly alcoholic (45–74% ABV) beverage.[1][2][3][4] It is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from herbs, including the flowers and leaves of the herb Artemisia absinthium, commonly referred to as "grande wormwood". Absinthe traditionally has a natural green colour but can also be colourless. It is commonly referred to in historical literature as "la fée verte" (the Green Fairy).