Some business trade writers are objective and let the readers form their own opinions from the provided information, and then there was Truman A. De Weese.

Excerpted from an article in System – The Magazine of Business, July 1907.

Retail Store Advertising
I – How to Lay Out the General Campaign

The development of retail advertising in the last twenty-five years; the various styles of advertising copy the store may adopt, and on what principles its campaign should be based

By Truman A. De Weese
Director of Publicity, Natural Food Company

The Five Classes of Retail Advertising and Their Characteristics

If we could make a careful study of modern retail advertising as to literary and typographical style, we would make a classification about as follows:

First, the Altman style, or ultra-conservative style, consisting of the simplest forms of announcement and very mild typographical display, with no effort whatever at literary or colloquial embellishment.

Second, the colloquial or Wanamaker style—a style which talks to the reader much as a good salesman might talk to a possible purchaser, a pleasing, heart-to-heart talk.

Third, the bombastic, sensational style, which consists of exaggerated claims or statements, typographical “scare-heads” and screaming headlines; a style that is the antithesis of the Altman style.

Fourth, the humorous style a kind of advertising indulged in by certain merchants or advertising managers who believe that a resort to cheap wit or buffoonery will attract the attention of readers where a common sense, conservative statement would escape the notice of the reading public.

Fifth, the essay or editorial style, consisting of tiresome and tedious redundancies, long, involved and incomprehensible sentences—a mixture of idiotic art and senseless literature.