Freelance copywriter specialising in recruitment communications
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Making up anagrams can sometimes uncover something quite apt

14/11/2019

1 Comment

 
Anyone can come up with a funny anagram (Adolf Hitler = Hell, do I fart!), but try making it topical. Whenever something big happens in the news or a political party comes up with a new slogan, I like to have a bit of fun trying to turn the relevant words into something that's meaningful, relevant and even revealing. One of my best was the anagram of Osama Bin Laden that i discovered in 2011... "Lob da man in sea" - because that's effectively what the US Troops did with him. I tweeted it at the time, and very soon it was all over the place - even on TV. I should have asked for a credit!
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​Over the past couple of days, I've been having a bit of fun trying to come up with anagrams of the Conservative Party's official election campaign slogan "Unleash Britain's Potential". My first effort "A Russian plot - beneath it, nil" wasn't bad. It was topical, as in the government failing to release a report into Russian interference in the 2016 leave campaign, and it made sense. So did my next effort, "Boris plain lies - then a taunt". This one pretty much sums up Johnson's modus operandi when it comes to style of speaking. My best, however, without any doubt was....
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It has been retweeted loads of times. I guess because people can see the irony in it. Here is the government announcing they want to unleash the UK's potential, but as it stands, we're still very much a part of Europe. Nothing has changed, to quote the much maligned Theresa May.

Why not have a go yourself? it's not as easy as it looks. Yes, an anagram server helps start you off, but it won't give you any kind of steer. You have to have an inkling of an idea and try and develop it from there. As an example, there are 104,167 possibilities for the phrase Unleash Britain's Potential, and they only show you the first 500 results, none of which bear any semblance to "Still European Inhabitants". In fact many of the results are just jibberish. Here are the results you get from just typing in "Unleash Britain's potential". They're not much use to anyone!
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The way to try and find an anagram that works is to identify one word that you know can be made up out of the letters and then see if you can make something that makes sense from the remaining letters. It can be a laborious process, trust me! But, sometimes, it pays off, not in monetary terms you understand, but from the satisfaction of knowing that you have created a little something that people enjoy reading. 

If you like anagrams and want to see more of mine, here they are.
http://www.alasdairmurraycopy.com/anagrams.html 
​The conservative manifesto ones will be rolled out on Twitter soon.
1 Comment
David McDonald
16/7/2020 09:39:51 am

What are you're thoughts on Willium Burroughs so called 'cut-up' technique, to be later used by the brilliant David Bowie?.

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    About Me

    An experienced creative freelance copywriter and former recruitment advertising agency client services executive up to Director level, I have also worked in the advertising departments of national and regional newspapers and at a London Advertising Sales House. I set up my own copywriting business back in 2001 and work with a wide range of clients on a variety of press and online copywriting projects, the majority focused on recruitment communications. You can also find me on Twitter under my pseudonym '@RecruitmentCopy'

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