The Ideal Customer Essays - Nordstrom, Michael Kors,

The Ideal Customer Carefree, adventurous, and always ready to have fun, is how I would describe the type of customer that would shop in my store. She's between the ages of 15 and 22, the perfect time to experiment with personal style and take risks with her wardrobe. Living in the suburbs of Seattle, this customer is upper middle class and has a job, but still gets spending money from her parents. She can mix the perfect find from Forever 21 with a more expensive item from the likes of Michael Kors or Free People. Her casual attire consists of True Religion jeans, a Juicy Couture velour jacket, and Ugg boots. Whether in high school or in a sorority at Washington State University, these girls always want their clothes to be classy and fun. I grew up with this customer living just outside of Seattle my whole life and went to school with them. These girls frequent stores like Nordstrom and are not afraid to be fabulous even if they are just going to high school for the day. These girls drive black BMWs and always have perfect manicures. On the weekends they go downtown Seattle with their girlfriends for dinner and possibly hit up one of the many 18 and over nightclubs. Spring break is always spent in Cabo, and summertime means a trip to Hawaii or a Cruise to the Bahamas. To create the look for my store I drew inspiration from my 17 and 16 year old sisters and from the people I went to high school with. I wanted to create a store that I, myself would be excited to shop in. For my portfolio pieces, I had my sister model clothes from our combined closets. Therefore, everything you see has actually been worn by the customers I would want shopping in my stores.

Showing Dialect in Dialogue

Showing Dialect in Dialogue Showing Dialect in Dialogue Showing Dialect in Dialogue By Maeve Maddox A reader asks how a writer wishing to create â€Å"a redneck swagger† would rewrite the â€Å"regular English† sentence â€Å"You’re surprising to me.† He offers the following options: â€Å"Y’a surprisin’ t’a me.† â€Å"Y’ah surprisin’ t’ah me.† â€Å"Ya surprisin ta me.† â€Å"Yah surprisin tah me.† Note: You can find my thoughts on the use of the term redneck here: Better Use â€Å"Redneck† With Care. My reaction to the model dialogue is that a â€Å"redneck† is not likely to utter the original sentence, with or without apostrophes. A native English speaker of any dialect would be more likely to say, â€Å"You surprise me.† But the point of the question has to do with the use of apostrophes and contractionsand presumably funny spellingsto represent dialect in fictional dialogue. Fashions in writing change. Representing dropped letters with apostrophes was a common device with 19th century authors. Well, then, Master Marner, it come to me summat like this: I can make nothing o the drawing o lots and the answer coming wrong; it ud mayhap take the parson to tell that, and he could only tell us i big words. George Eliot, Silas Marner. â€Å"I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considable ways behine you, towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could ketch up wid you on de lan’ ‘doubt havin’ to shout at you, but when I see dat house I begin to go slow.† Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn. Modern readers have little patience with this kind of writing. For one thing, multiple apostrophes and odd spellings are visually distracting. For another, such detailed attention to pronunciation in a novel distracts from the thought that the character is expressing, thereby interfering with an understanding of the narrative. In addition, some readers who speak nonstandard dialects find attempts to represent their home dialectseven if they are successful renditionsdisrespectful. Sprinkling dialogue with odd spellings is especially pointless when the misspelling conveys the same pronunciation as the standard spelling. For example, sez for says, and shure for sure. The consensus among today’s writing coaches is that dialect is best expressed with vocabulary, grammar, and easily understood regional expressions, rather than with apostrophes and made-up spellings. For example, the following bit of dialogue conveys rural speech without recourse to dropped letters or misspellings: That woman runs around with anything in pants. Can’t figure out how her and him got together in the first place. Good Lord knows he’s boring as a fence post.† –Nancy Hartney, Washed in the Water. Words like drawl and whine, and expressions like â€Å"a clipped Northern accent† can also be used to suggest a specific way of speaking. In writing dialogue, let the words do the work. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Fiction Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Apply to, Apply for, and Apply withDoes "Mr" Take a Period?9 Forms of the Past Tense