Repeat Offenders

We addressed this last year and will address it every year, as a matter of respect. Memorial Day is not a happy day! It certainly is not an excuse to offer 15 percent off and remind customers about 20 percent discounts during happy hour. (This was an ad for a recreational marijuana shop.) It’s a day to remember our fallen military. If there is a day not to be happy, this is it! How about, "Have a safe and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend." (And don’t say “Happy Good Friday” or “Happy Yom Kippur.” Those also are solemn commemorations.)

We’ll explain this once more. You’ve said someone definitely rammed a gate and definitely was killed by a cop. Then you called him a suspect. Of what is he suspected?? Say this: “Cop fatally shoots man police say rammed gate at Florida school.”

Another writer falls for this grammatical optical illusion. You’re thinking singing and you desperately want to say “chord.” But touch your throat and think rope or cable. It’s a vocal cord.

We acknowledge the difficulties when you’re using all uppercase. But grammar rules are grammar rules. No apostrophe here! You could do UFOS, but that doesn’t really work. Or you could be clever and still use all uppercase except for UFOs.

Here’s another bad comma assembly. Should be, “on foot, on a bike, or via horse-drawn carriage.” The rest is fine. Oh no! Wait! We missed one! The island is the size of a doormat?

Does this business get frequent flyer points for adding extraneous quote marks?

These guys made the opposite mistake. How about:
….you need to get this free report called “Six Strategies to Beat Inflation.”

Once again, as a courtesy, we will not identify the major TV network that made these goofs. We’ve said we cut some slack for typos unless someone should know better, or the mistake is so egregious you can’t understand how no one caught it. Gauging? How about gouging? And the second slide has two mistakes. When making one-third a caption, you do just 1/3. No rd. As for increaed, well, we don’t know what to say,

And we go to the video archives for Segment 18: Everyone Doesn’t Like Grammar. https://youtu.be/Qog48LhZdKU

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, menus, TV news graphics, 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!