I figured I'd place that disclaimer as the thread title, since I'd be very surprised if someone hasn't mentioned this yet, but if no one has then wow. What is wrong with this? Bueller?
Mistakes like that are unfortunately fairly common in advertising and signage. Here's one I saw at a Tesco last week:
I'm not a freak but bad spelling and grammar really gets on my nerves (I sometimes put in the correct punctuation on the internet if I can be bothered, I try to spell correctly all of the time though) A while ago at my school our sixth form canteen was closed due to the mess and the cleaner's refusing to clean up. On the sign someone I know wrote "It't there job" ... He's a B-Tec student that could count his GCSE's on one finger. But it's also really obvious, or at least to me as I know the function of an apostrophe, as to where to put it. Take the shortened word, in this case you're, and split it into it's two original words, you are. Does the sentence still make sense? If not, kill yourself. Or something less bad
You used the comma correctly but the apostrophe was wrong. Why do people in 'educated' English speaking countries have such trouble with using apostrophes correctly? This stuff is taught in primary school.
Two mistakes in one poster. That's poor My dad has a thing about this, he always feel that it should be illegal (actually against the law, a civil offense) to advertise using incorrect English, and that companies which do so should be fined heavily for it. I can understand where he's coming from, the state of the nation's English is so incredibly poor these days and people reading incorrect English all around them can not be helping.
They still have their Christmas decorations up?? The spelling mistake on the Gigabyte advert has already been highlighted in another thread.
I must be tired - where's the second? Edit - It's not apostrophes that really get my goat, it's the there/they're/their laziness.
It should be "Beers, Wines, & Spirits". When listing things in a situation like that you generally need to precede the "and" with a comma. The best illustration of why is made by looking at law firms in comparison to any old things. So above we have "Beers, Wines, and spirits". But for instance if you were describing two law firms e.g. "Jones and Edwards" and "Roberts and Smiths" you need to be able to denote which are pairs and which are not. So if you were employing both you would write "I am employing Jones and Edwards, and Roberts and Smiths." I believe it's named an Oxford comma, after the university that kicked off the practise. Some people belonging to certain, inferior universities claim it's not required. They're morons. edit: Of course if one were being really pedantic, you could say it should be either "What's in store?" Or "What's in store:", or perhaps just "In store:". I'm pretty sure the ampersands should also all be "and", not ampersands. Aditionally, only the first letter of each sentance should be capitalised, and there should be commas at the end of each line apart from the last which should end with a period. And anyone who points out mistakes in this post's spelling, grammar or syntax can go suck on a rodent. I know my English is far from perfect, but I try my best
i was taught that a comma before the "and" was optional in a list and unnecessary in a pair. And when using an ampersand symbol rather than the word, leaving out the comma seems more like a cosmetic decision than a grammatical one. ", &" looks kind of wierd to me.
Even the Oxford English Dictionary admits that the "Oxford comma" is optional. It can be used to provide clarity for lists in which the items are not single words, but I don't believe that it's necessary. However, I agree that it's generally good practice to use additional comma for the sake of clarity. I'm not so sure it's necessary to put a comma at the end of each line. It looks like the items are set up as a vertical list, so perhaps a bullet in front of each line would be more appropriate. -monkey
Agreed. I was also taught that the second comma before "and" was optional, and I prefer not to put one there Also, it seems to me that it should read "Beer, wines and spirits". I'm not sure why, but the plural of beer sounds wrong in that situation. May just be a difference in common usage over here sinve most of the time the signs say "Beer, wine and spirits". I also think we all need to get a life
And dont? A reasonable standard of English aids communication and is evidence that the writer is reasonably intelligent. A poor standard is not proof of a low mental age, just a strong clue. Our Boots Opticians (sic) had a notice to the effect that 'Orders cannot be emended..."; my wife suggested it should be 'amended', to which the optician retorted, "The spellchecker said it was OK". I find they were both wrong. According to Oxford, 'emend' means ‘correct and revise’, while 'amend' means ‘make minor improvements to’. Both infer a fault in the original. So 'Orders cannot be changed...' would be better. I shall tell the bitch next time I'm in.
