Over the course of "Horribly Wrong," our call-outs have been limited to the printed word. But as people who love accuracy, we tear our hair at the ways people butcher pronunciations of names, cities and countries. Some can be forgiven. Others are just plain dumb. After all, you wouldn’t say, “Cana-day.” So why do you say, “EYE-ran?”

NAME WRONG RIGHT

1. Boca Raton, Fla. Boca ruh-TAHN Boca ruh-TONE

2. Pete Buttigieg (U.S. Transportation Secretary) BOO-tuh-jeg Boot-edge-edge

3. Cannes, France Cans Cahn

4. Denali (National Park) Din-ALLEY dih-NAHL-ee

5. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (President of Turkey). ERDO-gahn AIR-dwan

6. Glasgow, Scotland GLASS-cow GLASS-goh

7. Kathy Hochul (New York governor) HAW-chul HOH-kull

8. Iran (nation) EYE-rann, ih-RANN ih-RAHN

9. Iraq (nation) EYE-rack ih-ROCK

10. Kamala Harris (Vice President). ku-MAH-luh KAW-mu-lah

11. Kiev, Ukraine Key-ehv Keev

12. Adam Kinzinger (U.S. congressman) KIN-ziger KIN-zing-er

Watch this on video: https://youtu.be/tbDJcSLX5rs

Next time: More bad speech.

Items before the Assizes:
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! On the docket:

Longtime readers and occasional contributors Bob Yankowitz, Larry Reines, and Art Fyvolent have motions before the court.
Bob and Larry submit about our April 30 “Grammar Police” segment, in which we again point out “10 p.m. tonight” as a redundancy. Both said sometimes you need to differentiate between tonight and tomorrow night. The Rules Committee has argued that tight writing is about saying the same thing with fewer words. The problem is solved by saying just “10 tonight.”
In our Aug. 24, 2022, segment, "Unforced Errors," we said, "people making third-grader mistakes.” Art asked whether it should have been: "…third-grade mistakes,"  "...mistakes made by third graders," or "mistakes made by a child in the third grade.” The Rules Committee's Lou Ann Frala opines: “Without the hyphen, it could mean mistakes made by a third grader, meaning there were two graders before the third grader got to it. According to AP style (the Associated Press stylebook), it’s fine. According to me, gentle reader is right and it’s grammatically incorrect. Any of his suggested alternatives would be preferable.”

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!