A reader asked if the shortest story (For sale, baby shoes, never worn) was written by Hemingway. I'd thought so too, but I wasn't able to find any original sources that said so when I looked into it.
Thanks to readers who are sharing additional ones with me over email:
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"—Blaise Pascal, though often attributed to Hemingway
President Calvin Coolidge at a formal dinner answering a woman seated next to him who told him she’d made a bet with a friend that she could get more than two words out of him: “You lose.”
The American army general McAuliffe got a message from German commander ordering him to surrender: “Nuts.”
The VW ad isn’t two words long. The picture has no words, and the ad required the picture and all the words beneath (including the VW logo) to make their point which has absolutely nothing to do with muscle cars.
Thanks for the reference, Ali. The Wikipedia page with the "Americans obsessed with muscle cars" quote actually came from, a CNN Money article (referenced in the Wikipedia page). It wasn't a comment about VW's design, it was a comment about Americans in the 1960's.
The car was designed in the 1930's to address Adolf Hitler's desire for "a people's car—an inexpensive, simple, mass-produced car" (quoted from the VW Beetle Wikipedia article).
The ad was created to get consumers to stop associating the Beetle with the Nazis and WWII-era Germany and to introduce consumers to "the advantages of having a small car," which were listed below the picture.
In any case, my original point was the ad isn't short. :-)
Hopefully we teach A.I to be concise too. 😂
It does have a tendency to go on and on sometimes, doesn't it? :) At least the ones I've been using.
A reader asked if the shortest story (For sale, baby shoes, never worn) was written by Hemingway. I'd thought so too, but I wasn't able to find any original sources that said so when I looked into it.
Here's a page that concluded the same:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby-shoes
Thanks to readers who are sharing additional ones with me over email:
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter"—Blaise Pascal, though often attributed to Hemingway
President Calvin Coolidge at a formal dinner answering a woman seated next to him who told him she’d made a bet with a friend that she could get more than two words out of him: “You lose.”
The American army general McAuliffe got a message from German commander ordering him to surrender: “Nuts.”
The VW ad isn’t two words long. The picture has no words, and the ad required the picture and all the words beneath (including the VW logo) to make their point which has absolutely nothing to do with muscle cars.
The muscle car reference is from the campaign's Wikipedia page. You're welcome to share your perspective if you know more about it. (I don't.)
Thanks for the reference, Ali. The Wikipedia page with the "Americans obsessed with muscle cars" quote actually came from, a CNN Money article (referenced in the Wikipedia page). It wasn't a comment about VW's design, it was a comment about Americans in the 1960's.
The car was designed in the 1930's to address Adolf Hitler's desire for "a people's car—an inexpensive, simple, mass-produced car" (quoted from the VW Beetle Wikipedia article).
The ad was created to get consumers to stop associating the Beetle with the Nazis and WWII-era Germany and to introduce consumers to "the advantages of having a small car," which were listed below the picture.
In any case, my original point was the ad isn't short. :-)