so you won't have to

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:17 PM -0500 6/15/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>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
>
A distant relative is Greyhound's "Take the bus/And leave the driving to us"

LH

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