And by “they,” I clearly mean the punctuation-abuse gnomes that populate my office building at night. Over the weekend, they went haywire, scattering these near every elevator.
I get that they were probably working off a template where they’d used the quotation marks to indicate “insert proper time here.” Fine. Just DELETE THEM when you’re done!
…or it would be, if I were cool. Anyway, I really like how sometimes the nature of a given error can tell you something about the person who made the mistake. Take a look at this one that Meg found, for example.
The person who wrote the copy for this package didn’t use a bad translation program or just make a funny second-language mistake. Well, I mean, they did, in the clunky word order and conjugation of “freeze-dry.” But the “plane” instead of “plain” mistake? To me, that indicates that the author actually spoke passable English. Someone knew that the word they wanted was “plain,” and just couldn’t figure out how to spell it. I think that’s neat.
Bobby Tables feels about this error that “The fact that it is itself a correction makes it all the sweeter.”
Thanks, BT!
This is Lisa S.’s first submission to RPB, and we love it!
This is one of those that just gets me right here, you know? I mean, this went through multiple people. Either the store owner commissioned it this way and the sign-maker didn’t correct it, or the sign-maker did it this way and the store owner didn’t know or care enough to demand that it be fixed. Money was spent on this, people.
Brava, Lisa!
Have I used that subject before? Whatever, I don’t care. Any day is better with a little Yul Brenner in it, even if his appearance is only in my head.
This is from Kacia, who has written up her own description of the situation for y’all. Take it away, Kacia!
The Chinese herbs aisle at our local Asian grocery is always a bit mysterious. There are all sorts of bags and boxes with strange combinations of dried things inside, and they are often labeled with what ailment the contents are meant to treat, rather than what’s actually in the package. Not that it would matter, since most of the writing is in Chinese anyway. This one just says “Chinese products” on the front!
Oh, but wait–what’s that at the bottom? Oh, it’s “soup stock (for hicken woup)”! Of course!
Perfectly reasonable, Kacia!
Hard-core, I-liked-it-before-it-was-cool RPBers may remember this picture, which was the second post ever on this blog. I’ve decided to resurrect it in honor of today’s “holiday.”
Happy Valentine’s Day, people!
Rebecca S. calls this “a wording fail.” That is, it’s not wrong, it’s just stupid.
Rebecca notes that Madison.com later modified the headline to “Walking in street in UW construction zone brings warning,” which is still a headline that makes me shudder. But I suppose we should be grateful. At least to Rebecca, for sending this in!
There is nothing wrong with this picture.
But there are two sides to every… er, pen-thing.
And yes, I think they were both written by the same person. That’s a pretty distinctive capital E.
So we have two options. Option A: This person suddenly and randomly decided to change both capitalization styles and their understanding of apostrophes after doing the (correct) first side. It’s good to mix it up! Or Option B: This person did not understand apostrophes, received a quick blow to the upside of the head from a colleague, did the second side correctly, and was too lazy or busy to re-do the first side. Not sure which is funnier.
Thanks, Q!
Oh, Body Shop, with your refusal to test on animals and your 100% PCR bottles and your run-ins with the DEA. Did you think that this general coolness meant the rules didn’t apply to you?
And it’s all over the store…
Just being in this one store made me twitchy. And when I think about all the Body Shop stores around the world, all sporting this campaign and its (SEE? THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE) attendant apostrophe violation… well, “twitchy” doesn’t begin to describe it.
Think about it like this. Someone, somewhere in the process of campaign design for a major multi-national corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars (it was purchased by L’Oréal in 2006 for £652 million), someone doesn’t know whether to use “its” or “it’s.” Fine. But after that person wrote the initial campaign materials, they went through dozens of hands. Maybe more than dozens. And in all the design, editing, market testing, and publishing stages, nobody said “Hey, I think that’s spelled wrong.”
Feel like writing a letter? Click here. And then, you know, go write another letter, just to keep some perspective. 🙂
Photo submissions from Shannon are like puzzles — he catches typos even I would usually stroll right past. So here you go, troopers: find the error.
Happy Monday!
