Have you ever caught yourself wondering where certain words come from? I’m a word lover. I love learning new words, big words, fancy words, and then of course using them as often as possible. Consider it just my way of being an intellectual. As any good wordsmith will tell you, the origins and history of words can be quite interesting. Today, I’d like to take you on a quick journey to understanding blurbs.
We’d better start at the beginning
Back in 1907 and American humorist Gelett Burgess published Are You a Bromide? for a special booksellers-convention edition of 500 copies. Burgess designed the book jacket which featured a good-looking young lady. He named her Miss Belinda Blurb and the copy on the back of the book read, “YES! This is a BLURB!” Even though the book has been long since forgotten, the word Burgess coined stuck. The rest is history as they say, but how are they used today?
How are blurbs used?
As you may have guessed, blurbs are all around us, but they didn’t start out that way. We’re familiar with the ones movie advertisers use like, “One of the best films of the year!” or “The summers must see film!” Their use has migrated from books to TV to movies and finally into the lingo and usage for the Internet. Blurbs are really just short advertisements, especially on the Internet.
Blurb n. – a brief advertisement or announcement, esp. a laudatory one: She wrote a good blurb for her friend’s novel. (source: dictionary.com)
1. A blurb on a book or a film can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviewers or fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author or simply claims about the importance of the work.
2. On the Internet a blurb is used to give a brief description or promotion of an article or other larger work. (wikipedia.com)
How to make the most of them
Blurbs can be extremely useful if used correctly. We use many types of blurbs on Cirrus ABS website design solutions.
- News blurbs
- Events blurbs
- Testimonial highlights
- Featured products or services highlights
- and so on
You see really any brief description or summary can be considered a blurb on your website. The real trick is how carefully it has been crafted. Just as you spend significant amounts of time on your traditional advertising needs, you should spend time thinking through these elements. Let’s take specifically about news blurbs for a moment. Things to consider would be the title of the news article, the date in which it is going to be published, and if you have one, the summary of the news article. Remember the information is no good to anyone if they don’t click on it or read it, so make them want to.
