Lou Ann Frala
We’ve said the Horribly Wrong team will not beat up on people who make simple typos. Unless we suspect the person really thought that’s how it was spelled. Or if a mistake went unnoticed for a long time. In this case, it was fixed only after the goof had been there for several hours, during which numerous viewers had tweeted and had emailed the network — including Horribly Wrong’s Lou Ann. Cleveland? Really? It’s a big city. Can’t miss it.
Same rule here. We posted this exquisite goof in a Grammar Police segment all the way back on Oct. 3. Who knows how long it was there before that? Since then — week after week, month after month — we’ve watched this outfit run the same ad, with the glaring misspelling, and symbolically bit our tongues. This past week, we found the ad had been redesigned. With the spelling mistake repeated!
This is redundant! And technically inaccurate. He wasn't the former secretary during the 2016 campaign. So it just should be "...national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's campaign." Horribly Wrong’s Lou Ann says, “The misuse of ‘former’ is a particular peeve.”
Next week we will deal with the world of misplaced modifiers. This is a doozy. And about a tragedy. He didn’t kill her in a notebook. Should be, “FBI: Laundrie admitted in recovered notebook to killing Petito.” And it misspelled her name.
Remember: “Less” for volume and “fewer” for counts. So: “Less pain” and “Fewer sick days.”
And we go to the video archives for Segment 10: More bad TV. https://youtu.be/7o02NVQiz20
From the mailbag:
Longtime friend and loyal reader Art Fyvolent of St. Petersburg challenged part of our Jan. 9 “Grammar Police” segment in which we said “residential community” is redundant. We’ve said “residential neighborhood” is. But Art says there can be many kinds of communities: “Business community. Church community. A very small city (unincorporated) or neighborhood…” We ran this past the Rules Committee. It concurs with Art!
Dr. Baruch Kahana of Miami Beach wrote, “The venerable NYTimes annoys me by insisting on being hyper-specific, to no real advantage. For example, when mentioning Putin, NYT insists on naming him “President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia”. That is much more information than we need to know, unless we might think of President Vladimir A. Putin of Albania, or President Vladimir B. Putin of Bolivia, or President Vladimir C. Putin of Canada, etc. Why not simply mention “Russia’s Putin”? Readers: You might recall our Nov. 7, 2021, segment on "Style." While most newspapers follow Associated Press style rules, some, especially big ones, have certain style rules of their own. The New York Times considers itself America's newspaper of record, and so it has very proper style rules, including inserting Mr., Mrs. etc. in front of names and including middle initials.
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!