The asterisk, that accursed punctuation mark, is flourishing again like a weed in a petunia patch. Perfectly matched to three-point type, it’s a cancer growing–and, damn it, thriving–as it eats away at the credibility of advertising messages.
For years I’ve railed against “The Asterisk Exception”: the standardized use of an asterisk to mask the truth. Hey, guys, that’s cheating. For example, Sprint says in a big newspaper ad, “Get 1500 minutes for $34.99 a month. That’s 250 Anytime Minutes plus 1250 Night & Weekend Minutes, all including nationwide long distance with a one-year Sprint PCS Advantage Agreement.SM”
Clear and straightforward enough, right? Well, lookee here: At the bottom of the page, in type so small I had to use a magnifying glass to read it, are eight tiny lines of “explanation.” First, this offer is available only if I buy a Sprint PCS telephone. Nothing in the ad–nothing, even here–tells me how much that phone costs.
But wait, there’s more. A nonrefundable $29.95 “phone activation fee” applies. Roaming calls are charged at “$0.69 a minute or $0.39 cents per minute, depending on specific local-market offers. [Doesn’t Sprint know where it places these ads?] Domestic long distance calls made while roaming on the Spring PCS Network are charged at an additional $0.25 per minute. Additional minutes charged at $0.35 per minute.” And on it goes, chipping away at the promise of “nationwide long distance” made in a type size four or five times bigger than the disclaimers.
Her Aster’s at Risk
I have to pick on Jamie Lee Curtis again. Here she is, next to an outline of the state of Florida, snickering at us out of a space ad in my local paper. She’s hawking VoiceStream long distance service: “500 statewide anytime minutes, includes long distance and digital roaming within Florida*, plus 2000 nationwide weekend minutes only $39.95 per month.”
Hold it. There’s an asterisk lurking in the bowels of this offer. And at the bottom of this ad, somehow VoiceStream has managed to reduce type to a size even smaller than Sprint’s. Good thing, too, because within five teeny tiny lines is a catalog of exclusions. It begins, “*Coverage not available in all areas. Map is not a representation of coverage…,” and it gets steadily worse. Weekends don’t begin until midnight Friday; “Our digital PCS system is not compatible with analog TTY which may delay or prevent emergency calls.” And then the standard asterisk coup de gr
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