「AXE」は英語の使い方に注意した方が良い。＋リストの作り方

I wonder if you saw this ad on the train. It's by AXE, encouraging men to smell good in order to attract women. They have given us a checklist to help us find love. It says:

1. × Attention -> ○ Notice, Pay attention
2. Spray
3. Go direct
4. × Happy -> ○ Be happy

The reason "happy" is wrong is because of the way we make lists. When you make a list, all of the items need to be of the same grammatical type (part of speech).

• part of speech《文法》品詞｛ひんし｝(definition from Eijiro on the Web)

In the list, "attention" is a noun, and "happy" is an adjective. The other two are verbs, so let's assume they meant to use verbs. To fix it, we change those two items to verbs.

Your lists can use nouns:

• I've got to buy tofu, green onions, and noodles at the supermarket.

You can also use verbs:

• Today I went to the bank, ran by the electronics store, and wrote this blog post.

Even adjectives are OK:

• The weather today was clear, comfortable, and cool.

What you can't do is mix types, like AXE did in their list. When you are making lists, make sure to keep the part of speech of each item the same.