"One pence"? Fuck off Orange, and take your overpaid ad agency with you.

The BBQ Pit
1

Orange (one of the big UK mobile phone companies) is currently running a billboard campaign advertising its cheap text-messaging rate. Fine. Or it would be, if the text on said billboards did not read, in toto:

Huh? It’s one penny, two pence (or pennies if you’re talking about individual penny coins).

Is it that difficult? You have six words on the damn billboard, and one of them is entirely the wrong fucking one? Sheesh, I can understand how you managed to miss that one in the huge proofreading job that this entailed.

2

Winner, Pedantic Awards 2003 - r_k

3

Spotting and commenting on a small mistake buried in a page of text or a hastily typed posting on a message board = pedantic.

Spotting and commenting on a glaring error on an enormous fucking billboard that only has six words (well five words and a numeral) on it in the first place = not that pedantic. IMHO :slight_smile:

4

IMHO - ‘1 pence’ is a commonly accepted term so pitting it’s use is pedantic.

Or is ‘one pence’ an error as bad and obvious as, say, apostrophes in the wrong place(s)?

5

Are you the kind of person when playing board games corrects the other players thusly -“It’s ‘die’ not ‘dice’!”

(just playing with you :slight_smile: )

6

What always gets me is, media is the plural of medium, so it’s wrong to use either mediums or to use media as a singular form, but people do it all the time so I suppose the dictionary will have to be changed again.

7

Can’t we take pride in this unique aspect of the English Language? (that it evolves)

doubleungood thoughtcrime

8

If you say “pence” is commonly used as a singular, I reply: “Bollocks.”

Native English speakers just don’t say that; it sounds totally wrong. “Oh look, there’s a pence on the ground.” I think not.

Big bunch of bumptiously bouncing bollocks.

9

No, but it is feasable for them to say “there is 1 pence on the ground”. ‘pence’ works when you are specifying the quantity of a coin (‘1’), but not when refering to it’s presence (‘a’)

“there is 1 pence on the ground” sounds ok to me

10

In fact, if Orange were to use ‘penny’ shouldn’t they also use ‘a’ as opposed to ‘1’? Wouldn’t “1 penny” be just as bad?

11

Why? It’s no different from saying “one dog” instead of “a dog”, and seeing as it’s specifying an amount of money, “one penny” is fine.

Guess we’ll have to agree to disagree then… oh, wait, this is the Pit. Screw you, numbnuts! :wink:

12

“one penny” is ok, but “1 penny” sounds a bit strange. If they should replace ‘pence’ with ‘penny’ then they should replace ‘1’ with ‘one’.

In fact they should do that anyway. Maybe some twerp in marketing said ‘penny’ sounds girly, and ‘one’ takes too long to read from a moving car.

goat feltcher.

:smiley:

13

The word “pence” in this context refers to the value of 1 penny, whereas “penny” is normally used to refer to the coin itself. There is nothing wrong with the wording on the billboard.

14

If you’d just use “cent” like a civilised nation, there’d be no problem now would there?

Who buys their phone service from a company named after a fruit anyway?

15

1 cent, 2 cents…

<Benny Hill>…with this sale, now if your neighbour asks how much Eldert cat food cost, you can tell them 2 p off…</Benny Hill>

16

I never actually knew that “pence == penny”. I thought it was just some weird UK monetary denomination, like “quid”, “pound sterling” or “euro”.

17

…or farthing, or crown, or guinea…

We had a decimal monetary system way before you did…

18

You’d have to deal with “50 cent” instead.

19

One of the times I bought something in Scotland, I could swear the cashier said “That’s one pent change.” :eek:

20

Bullshit. One penny, two pennies. Dumb Brits.

:wink: