"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.

"50% Less Calories"

This is a vocabulary error you likely see and hear frequently: the wrong choice of word to describe relative measurements. I've seen and heard it recently in local news coverage -- and late last week, noticed it in the supermarket, too.

Words like "less" and "fewer" might seem synonymous at first, but they aren't. Fortunately, there's an simple trick to help you choose the right word.

If you're talking about something you can't literally count, use these words:

• less (e.g. less money, less energy, less sand)
• amount (e.g. a smaller amount of money, a smaller amount of energy, a smaller amount of sand)

Thus, "50% less calories" is incorrect, because while you can't literally count energy without getting more specific about unit measurement, you can literally count calories. 

If you're talking about something you can literally count, use these words:

• fewer (e.g. fewer dollars, fewer calories, fewer grains of sand)
• number (e.g. a smaller number of dollars, a smaller number of calories, a smaller number of grains of sand)

Saying "50% fewer energy" would be just as incorrect, since "energy" isn't literally countable.

To summarize: if you can't literally count the item in question, use "less" or "amount;" if you can literally count it, use "fewer" or "number." 

This orange juice, the manufacturer would like us to understand, delivers 50% fewer calories than its full-sugar alternative.

"Growed"

"Growed."

Groan!

"Lude behavior"

We might be tempted to think television journalists don't have to worry about spelling and grammar the way print journalists do... but errors in the text broadcast news outlets use on-screen are embarrassing, too.

This screen should have been about charges of lewd behaviour, not lude behaviour.

I suspect whoever wrote this headline simply hadn't ever seen "lewd" in writing, and spelled it the way it sounds -- which is tough to address, because you don't know what you don't know until you find out you didn't know what you thought you knew.

You know?

Having a skilled copy editor (who has a wide vocabulary and strong spelling and grammar) review all text that will go to air can help avoid errors like this one.

Bad grammar is bad branding

A new school year begins next week, and with it, a new blogging season for me.

In the meantime, here is a great article from AdWeek discussing the causes and implications of poor grammar in business.

But is the proliferation of errors in business communication today just about grammar? I don't think so -- I think it's bigger than that. Many errors we see, like the one above, are committed by people who likely write well enough, but aren't paying enough attention to what they've written. Proficiency in writing is one thing, but attention to detail is another.

Given the number of channels constantly feeding us messages, it's no wonder we're a bit distracted. But 21st-century communications technology aside, when it comes down to the proofreading stage, the best writers and editors are those who can tune it all out and actually read what's on the page.

That's not a language skill as much as it's a form of discipline -- one that's a significant competitive advantage in the professional communication industry, especially at the entry level.

I'm looking forward to another year of helping students build that discipline!

"Non-redemable"

I was pleased to receive a special discount coupon from a retailer recently.

Pleased, that is, until the coupon's terms and conditions raised a pretty important question.

"Non-redemable?"

There are a few grammatical/proofreading problems with this list of terms, including inconsistent use of upper-case letters. (Why are the P on "Program" and the T on "Transferable" capital letters?) The incorrect spelling of "redeemable" suggests a too-quick proofread on its own; but even if that word had been spelled correctly, was the retailer really trying to tell me this coupon is not redeemable at all?

It's likely that bullet was supposed to provide extra information to clarify the circumstances under which the coupon can't be redeemed (e.g. on certain types of merchandise, on the purchase of other training programs) -- but due to the too-quick review of this coupon, the writer didn't notice it was missing.

When you need to leave something blank because you don't know the answer, use a placeholder

In professional writing, you sometimes need to write a document when you don't have all the final details.

For example, when writers in a publicly-traded company draft a news release about something the Board has yet to approve, they'll use a bullet or another symbol to show where the missing information goes (e.g. "Today, the Board declared a dividend of $ * per share").

This allows a writer to write around the missing information, but puts something in the text to flag that there's information missing. A search for the symbol in Word helps you fill in the information quickly once you have it.

If my coupon-writer had used this approach, his/her text might have looked something like this:

"Non-redeemable toward **************"

That would have been much tougher for the proofreader to miss.