so you won't have to

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 6/15/07, Dennis Baron <debaron at uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> I've occasionally heard this formula, usually in some kind of slogan:
>
> we do x, so you won't have to.
>
> X is usually something difficult, unpleasant, or otherwise to be
> avoided.
>
> Then today I came across a web site selling t-shirts for Defense
> Language Institute alums, and one of the t-shirts says,
>
> "We speak Farsi so you won't have to."
>
> Is there a locus classicus for the general formula, which sounds like
> it comes from an ad or a movie?  A web search tells me it's a lot
> more common than I thought.

Even more common is "we do x so you *don't* have to". In recent years
this formula has been used in TV commercials for Scrubbing Bubbles:
"We work hard so you don't have to." It's possible that the Scrubbing
Bubbles version helped popularize the snowclone variants now appearing
online, but it's been used in ad copy for a long time. Earliest I've
found on Proquest:

1951 _Washington Post_ 11 Oct. B15 (advt.) We study wines so you don't have to.

A Google Answers thread also mentions a Kentucky Fried Chicken tagline
from 1970 along the lines of  "We do the cookin', so you don't have
to."

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=508597


--Ben Zimmer

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