Fixin's

A (thankfully!) rare find: a blatant grammatical error on permanent (at least, non-temporary) signage in a national chain store. 

If you're uncertain what's wrong this sign, check out Grammar Girl's post on apostrophes and plurals.

Spellind

In case the photo is too small for easy reading, the bullet says:

"Tests of current academic achievement (tests of various aspects of reading, spellind and writing, paper and pencil math or math reasoning, oral language skill);"

This bullet is on a website for a business that provides educational support for kids who struggle in school.

"Strategic impotence"

Sometimes, spell-check won't save you

"[Y]ou will be played a central role in drafting and editing various documents and materials of strategic impotence to the company."

I'd consider adding "assist with proofreading advertisements" to this job description.

"Clipettes pinch ass"

I'll admit it - that was a click-bait headline - but it comes directly from this sign on a store display blog reader Renee noticed when she went looking for hair clips for her toddler.

Key word: assorted

Sometimes, companies use software to automatically generate text - and in this case, to automatically abbreviate it, as necessary. Auto-abbreviations can be confusing, but customers are usually able to figure them out. Here, we can figure it out, but it's unintentionally funny.

Not always so funny

Last year, Coca-Cola Ltd. had to apologize after an auto-text mix-up led to an offensive expression being printed on the cap of a vitaminwater bottle. The company was printing one English word and one French word on every bottle cap, and had proofread all the English words and all the French words... but hadn't considered how the two might be read in either language when put together. The auto-text did the rest.

Automation makes things easier, but it's not foolproof

This supermarket and Coca-Cola are far from the only organizations that have been embarrassed because their automatic communication tools have done what they're meant to do: complete tasks without a human having to be involved. Whether it's examples like these, or automatically-generated Tweets, there are many ways automatic communications can backfire.

Whenever you plan to use these, you're well-advised to build in some checks and balances where human beings have to either troubleshoot potential problems before they happen (for example, in the vitaminwater example, having someone read the words in each language from the perspective of someone who speaks the other language, to spot any issues), or to approve automatic messages before they are sent.

Thanks for the submission, Renee!

I'm no mathematician, but...

In this passage from the November 14th issue of a very well-known American news magazine, 82 is, apparently, greater than 86.

I'm not certain whether this is an error of the writer (possibly distracted while writing?) or of the typesetter/designer, but either way, a good copy edit should have surfaced the error before it was published.

When you're editing, you need to check your text in a few different ways:

1) Is the content factual?
2) Are all the words spelled correctly, numbers presented accurately, etc.?
3) Is the grammar correct?

Errors can creep in at any stage of the process

I was shocked the first time I received a "final proof" of an annual report from a designer only to discover new errors had surfaced in the text. They were minor changes - in fact, they were instances in which the designer had decided to "help" my client by "improving" the sentences (note the use of sarcastic quotation marks - see last week's post on this blog).

We caught them all and changed them back before it went to print - but only because I was proofreading the whole text one more time (as opposed to simply confirming our last round of changes had been made accurately).

Once the document is published, it's published. You can sometimes withdraw it to correct an error - but often, you can't. My advice: always give a text one full, final proofread before signing off.

"Ribs"

A contributor sent in this photo, suspicious of what was on the menu in this restaurant. Is it, in fact, serving ribs? If not, what is it serving to customers who order ribs?

Though you'll often see them used this way (The Blog of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks is devoted to this error), quotation marks are not intended to provide emphasis -- and using them for emphasis can lead to embarrassing miscommunication.

Why? Because quotation marks are also used to indicate sarcasm -- much like "air quotes" do in verbal communication.

In the photo above, the restaurateur intends to communicate that s/he serves the best ribs in town -- but his/her quotation marks suggest s/he's serving something other than ribs.

In the same way, we have to wonder:

Is this Director really acting?

And what really happens to you if you bring a re-usable mug for your coffee?

If you want your readers to take your message at face value, don't use quotation marks for emphasis.

Use typography.

"Jeannettes"

A reader in Prince Edward Island sent in this great example to show why it's important to use a professional translator. You may think you can get the job done less expensively using an online translation tool, but if there are more than one meaning for a word, or if your English word doesn't have a direct translation in the target language, you could get into trouble.

Whoever wanted to translate "brownies" for this packaging was likely unaware either that there isn't a direct translation for the word in French (all the francophone-Canadians in my world call them "brownies," even when speaking French), and likely didn't consider that "brownie" has another meaning in English.

This is the kind of brownie you could accurately translate as a "jeannette."

Photo from Girl Guides of Canada 

There are other spelling errors visible in the French on this packaging, too -- which is too bad, because the company was making a specific effort to be inclusive with its packaging.

Translation is sometimes a secondary consideration, especially when the vast majority of the target market prefers the primary language. But if you're going to do it at all, it's worth having an expert make it right. Good translators don't just translate each word into its other-language counterpart -- they are gifted writers, too, who can ensure the subtext, tone, rhythm and emotion of your text carry through.

On a brownie package, of course, we're really just looking for the words... but a good translator can ensure you get those right, too.