Recently I received a letter from my Honda dealer which should have simply said that your vehicle’s basic limited factory warranty coverage is about to expire, and we recommend you obtain additional supplemental coverage.
Instead I got the stilted 25-word version shown above in a cartoon caption. If your speech draft contains long sentences like that, then you should revise it. They continued:
“We recommend you obtain additional coverage, so that you protect yourself against the financial cost of mechanical repairs* after your factory warranty expires…. *Certain conditions, restrictions, limitations and exclusions apply. If you have already purchased a vehicle service contract, please disregard this notice.”
On September 15, 2015 I blogged about how you should Beware of stilted language. But that sort of stilted language is common in insurance and legal writing. In a blog post on August 8, 2012 titled Doesn’t Q & A mean quiche and asparagus? I mentioned that AD&D means Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance coverage. (It really covers either death or dismemberment). Together they come up in gruesome episodes of TV shows like Criminal Minds.
The image was adapted from a cartoon on page 81 of a 1918 book by Fontaine Fox titled Cartoons Second Book at the Internet Archive.
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