Forgot the credit to this sappiness ungrammaticalness: Steve Wariner’s “Holes in the Floor of Heaven” : barf smilie :
[QUOTE=Jurph]
And while we’re at it, “tounge”. Toonj? Please, show me where on you’re body is their a tounge? I’m dyeing too know.[/Jurph]
Sometimes I trip on my “tongue” too; it’s because I think of “lounge”. My Nana remembered having missed tongue on a spelling bee in her childhood; I’m glad I’m not the only one who still remembers those things (“etymology” for me).
Who the heck said we were talking only about message boards?
I am specifically talking about material sent to senior executive clients! I’m in the process of re-writing a brochure that has been sent out to top-level executives of banks, law firms, and accounting agencies. It was so bad, editing it is a complete waste of time. I’m starting from scratch.
This monstrocity actually used the examples I had above. At one point, the intended meaning was entirely lost, so that the “product” sponsor who was hosting “breakfast” would be eaten. Yes, that’s right. Our pamphlet went to several CEOs with a sentence that said that we would eat the humans that sponsored the event.
Note: I am aware that there are cases where the above can be used. E.g./ Being aware of something within oneself “being conscious of guilt.” Though it tends to be archaic. I find it mildly irksome nonetheless. Same with mix-ups between “counsel” and “council”.
The pamphlet I’m working with now is a disaster. I was given a word document that they’ve been using to solicit big-money sponsorship. All I was supposed to do was design a new layout for it. The promotional copy was the worst I’d seen in ages and the errors in basic grammar and punctuation were egregious. There were even a few stray letters here and there, such as: “Sponsoring e one of our tours…”
I initially thought I had the wrong draft because it looked like it was written by a high-school intern and it clearly hadn’t been proofread. So I called up to ask for the final draft.
“What do you mean? That is the final draft. That’s the one we’ve been sending out.”
I was aghast. “You’ve been mailing this out???”
I proofread it quickly and faxed it back with the proofreader doodles. The VP was mortified! The text had been written by an employee that they really trusted to do the job because he had a degree in journalism. Perhaps it was really a “degree” in journalism.
Without including the actual sentences, here are some examples:
Intended meaning: “We will discuss your needs and we will deliver.”
Conveyed meaning: “We will deliver, or we might not. So we’ll talk about it.”
Intended meaning: “Your logo will be prominently displayed in a high-traffic area.”
Conveyed meaning: “Your logo will be in an area were there is a lot of drug dealing.”
Intended meaning: “Sponsors can host a continental breakfast.”
Conveyed meaning: “Sponsors will be eaten for breakfast.”
There were a few other real howlers, but I can’t remember them off the top of my head.
If you don’t mined, I’d like to point out yet another spilling misteak that you’ve maid… the present participle of ‘come’ is spelled ‘coming’, unless you are a person whose not from America, in witch case its spelt ‘coming’.
If you have actually mind, you wood no that their are steel plenty of Jims out they’re, jest way-ting to be Pict up buy sum lubberly lasso.
Perish the thought, but they may have all the same info on-line. I’d be too afraid of what Google would produce. Most of the mistakes are misplaced modifiers, seemingly random capitalization, and continual switching from plural to singular and back again , and some boggled homophones (“council” and “counsel”).
It looks as if the capitalization rule this guy followed for titles is:
“Words than contain four letters or less, words that start with ‘th’, and pronouns are not capitlized, everything else is.”
Oh yeah. I’ve noticed a recent proliferation of the your/you’re mistake over in GD. I assume the OP is as careless as the grammar and usually don’t click on them.
Every other day I go to my gym and encounter a sign-up sheet for the popular cross-trainers; it’s been xeroxed a zillion times every day and it orders the gym rats to sign up for “Cross-Trainers with Handels”. ARRRRGH!! I could use a nice blast of classical music as I’m skiing away to nowhere but do I get a nice blast of one of Georg Friederich’s livelier tunes? Nope, it’s 80s remix and bland hip-hop 24/7.
Ahem. Premature submission syndrome. Here’s the better OP:
Oh yeah. I’ve noticed a recent proliferation of the your/you’re mistake over in GD. I assume the OP is as careless as the grammar and usually don’t click on them.
Every other day I go to my gym and encounter a sign-up sheet for the popular cross-trainers; it’s been xeroxed a zillion times for each new day and it orders the gym rats to sign up for “Cross-Trainers with Handels”. ARRRRGH!! I could use a nice blast of classical music as I’m skiing away to nowhere but do I get one note of one of Georg Friederich’s livelier tunes? Nope, it’s 80s remix and bland hip-hop 24/7.
Doesn’t bug me in e-mail or message boards much. It’s okay if in this kind of casual context people play fast and loose with some of the rules, or type so speedy that they use the wrong word.
It does bug me though that lately, I keep trying to type “knew” for everything. Knew, new, or gnu – if it was up to my typing paws, it would all be splled “knew”. Gah! This better just be a phase!
Sorry, but this sentence reminded me of one of my pet peeves: it’s “people who,” not “people that” … “humans who,” not “humans that.” Feel free to point out any errors in this post. I deserve it.
My boss thinks that the word “perk” means the same as “pique,” as in “to perk one’s interest.” I think he just doesn’t know how to spell “pique.” He once wrote a headline (he’s my editor) that said something to the effect of: “After 50 years of farming, John Anderson keeps on perking.” I asked him what the hell that was supposed to mean, and he replied, “You know, ‘perking.’” No, I’m sorry, but I don’t know. Ugh, with a capital “U.”
The apostrophe in Y’all comes between the Y and the A, not the A and the L. The apostrophe shows the ‘ou’ has been omitted. It makes no sense to put it elsewhere.