Time to take another look at mistakes that wound up in print. Sometimes, I’m tempted to include gems from the Internet, but I don’t think it’s fair to poke fun at everyday folks, especially when they might be posting to Facebook from one of those smartphones with a touch-screen keyboard so small that it’s nearly impossible to get it right.
Professionals who should know better, on the other hand …
While tooling down the Interstate the other day, I listened to a succession of local radio stations, and almost swerved off the road when I heard one small-town announcer deliver a carefully scripted commercial for the national Quizno’s sandwich chain.
He talked about the many delicious sandwich choices available at the local Quizno’s, adding that they were all carefully prepared on Artesian bread. His reading underscored the danger of using big, fancy words in copy — words that everyone may not understand.
In a recent blog entry, I mentioned a pet peeve regarding the non-word “alot.” And I mentioned that I have many pet peeves. One that many businesses make involves a homophone that carries three different spellings and three entirely different meanings.
The biggest misuses of it these days show up when companies establish a presence on the Internet. Those presences are what are known as “websites,” and yes, that’s one word, no hyphen, and no space, thank you. People who should know better (and don’t) will often use “web cites” or “web sights.” Those are bad, bad things, and if I were emperor, they would carry lengthy prison sentences and perhaps just a smidge of torture. (I’ll ignore the fact that some readers are thinking that a lecture from me on the subject would qualify as both.)
When people are naming a business or a service, they frequently struggle with finding the right name. In many cases, some private joke provides the inspiration. But be careful, because what strikes you as funny might not have the same impact on prospective customers.
I recall a restaurant that opened up under the name Crazy Chef. Somehow, I got past the apprehension and went in, where I had a pleasant lunch. I inquired about the name, and the server said the owner was known as “Crazy Nick” among his friends, who thought Crazy Chef was the perfect name for his place.
I admit it: writers can be picky creatures. We see language in much the same way a carpenter sees his or her prized circular saw: a tool we wield to accomplish challenging tasks with a certain level of quality.
That’s why writers cringe … or even scream … when they encounter misuses of words. Every writer I know has his or her pet peeves. I have a collection of several pets, but one that really gets me riled up is the non-word, alot. Yes, I said non-word, because the ever-growing English language still does not recognize “alot” as a word. Nor should it.
Sometimes people need to give thoughts to the placement of their signage. Take the convenience store I passed recently that had two of those temporary yard signs placed side-by-side on their wide green lawn. Being a well-trained human, I first glanced at the sign on the left, which said “Take ‘n’ Bake Pizza $5.99,” but any appetite that created vanished when I looked right and read “We have live bait.”
Can snack foods feel insulted? That was my first thought during a visit to a Target store, when I saw an aisle sign pointing the way to “Jerky Snacks.”
As social media continues to explode, a subset of users is frustrating some posters and delighting many others. Viewed as the evil grammar police by their critics, these are the people who take time to point out grammatical and spelling mistakes in their friends’ and associates’ posts. Some of us see them as heroes.
The casual nature of Facebook, Twitter, and whatever social media channel we’ll all be using next month leads many users to take a fairly sloppy approach to communicating. As long as their meaning gets across to their followers, who cares whether it’s spelled correctly or structured properly?
Many companies use surveys to get a better sense of what customers, prospects, and visitors think about them, what they offer, or even what opportunities exist. That’s a good thing. Many of those companies let the IT department develop those surveys. That’s a bad thing.
It isn’t that the IT people don’t know how to accomplish the task at hand. In fact, they’re very good at it. The problem is that they are focused on getting the right information and aren’t aware that a survey creates an impression with the person who is responding. So they design the survey to ensure that they get every piece of information, regardless of how they do it.
Sometimes marketers can be their own worst enemies. Take the writing practice that invested in Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
I won’t mention their name, but their headline promises “Fast, affordable and professional written copy by experienced copywriters.”
If you’re going to come up with a cleverly invented name or spelling for your product or service, make sure it doesn’t create any inadvertent pronunciations.
Case in point: Pizza Hut has been promoting its line of calzones as P’Zones. They want you to pronounce that as “puh-zones.”