Frozen yogurt will be served

Some of the best (or worst) examples of poor language skills appear when unexpected circumstances arise and a change in policy, service or process needs to be communicated.

Yesterday I found two lovely examples at the Wrentham outlet mall (where I also found a cool olive green-zebra print jacket, reduced from a ton to a score).

The first was in the food court:



Almost poetic, isn't it?

What I love most, though, is that it doesn't explain why there's a problem.

"So, is your refrigerator broken?"

"No, it's working fine."

"Did you run out of yogurt? I've been here when the coffee stall ran out of milk, and when the sandwich stall ran out of bread, so I thought maybe ..."

"No, no, we have plenty of yogurt."

"So can I have some?"

"Ah, um, no."

"Well, that's inconvenient."

"Yeah, sorry."

Down at the other end of the mall, outside the Village Cafe, was another apology:



Due to the increase in the economy?

It can't mean "due to economic growth" if they need to reduce the discount. Does it mean "due to the need to be economical"?

I asked senior economic correspondent The Boy for his analysis. He had no clue what they were trying to say.

I'm not suggesting businesses need to explain their decisions in excruciating detail; merely that if something has changed--and especially when an apology is necessary--it makes for better customer relations, reducing uncertainty and increasing user confidence, when communication is clear.

Copyeditor General's ruling: When outlet shopping, it's always a good idea to bring your own snack.

The British will not be considered superior

Last week I was in England, where I discovered that poor signage is a universal blight. And whether a symptom of stereotypical British politeness or just lack of editing skills, there's a tendency to throw more words on a sign than necessary.

The best examples of this were in the local city council offices. However, the prevalence of security cameras made me reluctant to take photos, so I'll have to tell, rather than showing:

MOBILE PHONE USERS

COULD ALL USERS OF MOBILE PHONES
PLEASE HAVE RESPECT FOR OTHER
CUSTOMERS AND KINDLY REFRAIN FROM
USING THEM WHILE CARRYING OUT
TRANSACTIONS AT THE COUNTER.

THANK YOU

Let's put aside the fact that they really shouldn't be using other customers at all, and focus instead on the overall message.

What they really want to say is "hang up your damn phone," but obviously that's much too brusque. But adding the pleases and kindlies and thankyous--and printing THE WHOLE THING IN CAPS--just means more words to wade through to find the useful part. By which time your phone has started playing the Crazy Frog and you're next in line.

And for those who like to believe the British education system is substantially better than that in the US, here's more evidence to suggest otherwise.

Left luggage office at Heathrow Airport (Terminal 3, Arrivals):



Photo caption at the Museum of Hartlepool:



(My mum found that one, so she gets to be Deputy of the Week!)

In a store window, also in Hartlepool:



Apparently it's not enough to mangle the use of "everyday" ...

Finally, a twofer--too many words and poorly punctuated:



Does "dog fouling" refer to making sliding tackles on terriers?

Copyeditor General's ruling: Evidently the problem is greater than I thought. We need to install a CG at the EU.

Insurance will be reassuring

CGHQ received a letter recently:



You can see a larger version here, but it's so poorly written that I wanted to break it down into sections for easier analysis.

Paragraph one:



Sounds like a warning, doesn't it? "Targeting" is usually associated with fraudulent crime when not used in a marketing sense (which, some may argue, is the same thing).

So should I be concerned about impending victimhood?

Perhaps not; it appears the nameless underwriting company is reducing prices. Or is reducing the prices of other (various) companies. I wonder whether they know about this?

And it's not clear which prices are reduced. Or reduced off. One assumes it's house insurance, but it could be anything, given the apparent variety of other companies involved.

Let's move along.



I always thought it was "avail oneself of" something. At least, that's what the dictionary says. Few things are more irksome than the misuse of highfalutin' phraseology.

And this isn't great from a usability standpoint, either; they're making the reader (the customer) do the work of finding the number himself. Not as much of a gaffe on a printed letter as it would be online, where the trigger finger is always ready to click away if things become complicated, but the problem is the same. The reader has to look for the number (written in a much smaller type size) at the top of the page.

Would it have been so hard to repeat it in the sentence? Or to include the contact name here, instead of two lines later?

But perhaps everything will be okay. They kinda sorta guarantee it. Maybe.



Would have been a great pun if they were offering legal help with inheritance distribution. But they're not. So it's either an attempt at sarcasm or a not-so-subtle Sopranosesque threat.

And then, to close: nothing. No "Thank you for your time," no "With best wishes"--not even a "Yours, etc." It's a letter from no-one, pulled from the printer and whacked into an envelope with as little effort as possible. Three out of four paragraphs start with the same word--"please"--but that's as close as this company comes to trying to make nice with their prospective client.

On the positive side, at least there are no typos.

Dinner will be tasty and typo-free

Typos in menus: could there be a better way to combine my favorite pastimes? Here's a roundup of some of the best.

Would you prefer to order from the ala cart menu (as offered at the St. Louis Hyatt) or the prefix menu (as offered at Ricardo Steakhouse in NYC)?

Which begs the question: is there such a thing as a suffix menu? Would that be dessert only?

Tempo in Alexandria, Virginia, takes a different approach with their "price-fix" menu, which I assume is an attempt to sell all dishes at the same price as competing restaurants.

Let's begin ...

Mescaline salad--theoretically, this has been illegal since 1970. Yet it keeps cropping up on menus everywhere. Shouldn't the DEA do something about this?

Not in the mood for salad? How about a nice piece of beef? Or possibly jungle cat?



Perhaps something from the sea?



(Will also bring your car around after the meal.)

And now would you like to see the desert menu?

Oh, but you know I'm not the only one who obsesses over this stuff. There are so many eagle-eyed diners out there ...

"World's best" will not be a regional distinction

In the market for a sparkly something to wear to our Texas wedding, I wandered into So Good, a magpie's dream of a costume jewelry store in Boston. Oh, they have everything: oversized Lisa Simpson-style bead necklaces, diamante anklets, lucite bangles, pendants with skulls and kitties and crosses and guitars and hearts and stars ...

Perhaps, then, they're justified in claiming to be the best in the world. Or the best in Boston. Or is it the best in the world, Boston division?

Socio-political criticism will be proofread first

On the back of a truck in the parking lot of the Christmas Tree Store, Salem, New Hampshire:



Hilarious, no?

But here's the thing: I had a conversation a few weeks ago with a friend who's studying linguistics. He suggested that another word for grammatical stickler was "snob."

Yes, he was playing devil's avocado a little, but his point stands: is it fair to highlight the educational failings of others, to hold them up to the light and laugh? Haven't we all sent work with egregious typos out into the world, sometimes not noticing our mistakes until eagle-eyed friends (yeah, thanks, Kyle) have brought them joyfully to our attention?

So no more mockery of individual, personal grammatical goofs.

However, anything produced by professional organizations for public consumption is still fair game. Such as this sign at Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire:

Texas websites will be messed with

Tomorrow we fly down to Texas for some family wedding-style fun, so recently I've been site-hopping, looking for event schedules, restaurant reviews and visitor information. As a result, I've encountered sites at all levels of usefulness and professionalism.

At the "nicely executed" end of the scale is austintexas.org, a lively, detailed collection of info, including a fun interactive map of Austin that lets you flag relevant attractions and leap from one location to another like a giant virtual kangaroo.

At the "please tell me this is some kid's homework" end of the scale is riverwalkguide.com, the homepage intro of which begins thus:

"Welcome to the San Antonio River Walk Guide. Your guide to everything along the River Walk and the Downtown San Anotnio area. "

So we start with a sentence fragment and a typo? Fabulous! I would be generous and assume the latter is intended to pick up search results from a mis-typed keyword were it not for the fact that the site has more errors, grammatical inaccuracies and flat-out oversights than should be legal for a promotional communication.

Fiesta survival tips: "From what to wear, where to park, its al its all here."

The River Walk Planner: "Create your very own River Walk Plan. Browse the San Antonio River Walk and nver lose track of where you plan to stay, places to see, and much more Get Stared Now!"

In an attempt at personalization, the site includes functionality to allow visitors to create an itinerary. However, the developers' coding and database skills only go so far, as is evident from this warning at registration:

"DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD - You can not retrieve your password and we can not recover it for you. Sorry, just please don't forget."

Best page on the site, though, is "Top 10 things to bring to San Antonio." Extra kudos for the warning to bring antacid ("this is so you can enjoy San Antonio’s spicy Tex-Mex food and tangy margaritas without grief") and the caveat that cash machines may try to rip you off ("Save money by not having to use the ATM’s").

The final tip on this page:

"10) Sun Block because if your not use to the South Texas Sun"

Oh, but I'm not use! What will happen to me?

Copyeditor General's ruling: Someone desperately needs to mess with Texas. Or at least San Antonio. Or at least riverwalkguide.com.

Oh, style guide bonus: the editors should figure out whether they're promoting the River Walk or the Riverwalk or the RiverWalk.

Websites will not be (d'oh!) under construction

Forgive me for turning this into "When I am Usability-Guy General" for a while, but I just saw the website for The Simpsons Movie.

Given that the film opens in 15 days, and that the publicity machine is already cranking at full speed, is it crazy to expect that the promotional website would be ready? *

The site has a very cute tool for creating your own avatar: how you would look if you lived in the Simpson's universe. And then you can explore Springfield, visiting the town hall, the Kwik-E-Mart and the Simpsons' home.

Here I am at Moe's Tavern. I think Homer likes me.



But hold on a moment: I should say you will be able to explore Springfield one day. For now, you can only get as far as the bar (oh, just like real life!). Everything else is unfinished.





The same is true for the "About the film" section: the only info currently available is a two-sentence synopsis that doesn't tell us anything we don't already know (Homer is stupid! The movie is animated! It's based on a TV show!). The "cast and crew" and "production notes" sections are either not written or, more likely, are still going through the legal/approval process.



Mobile and partnership info? Also coming soon.

Now, I'm sure that most of the audience for this movie won't notice or care about such things. There are trailers and games and downloads enough that a few non-functioning pages can be forgiven.

Not by me, though. And not, I'm sure, by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, whose 1994 Web Usability Study found this:

Users distinctly disliked seeing "under construction" markers. As one user put it, "either the information is there or it is not; don't waste my time with information you are not giving me." Users were particularly aggravated when they had linked to a page only to find that it was under construction. One user said "At least give me something for going to the page; don't put it out there if it is not working."

And that was written way back in the Internet's Dark Ages--you know, when The Simpsons was funny.

Copyeditor General's ruling: simpsonsmovie.com is a high-profile marketing tool, produced for a major corporation to promote a globally recognized brand. The least they could do is show a little professionalism.

Mmm ... professionalism ...

*And yes, I do assume that this is a temporary issue, and that this post will be redundant within a few days. At least I hope so.

Edit: The movie has now been released, and the previously unavailable areas are now all working. Except one.

Apostrophe on the stand again

Evidence against the accused comes from a Craigslist posting.

Yes, your honor, I'm aware the source means it may be inadmissable in court.

Craigslist is an oversized community bulletin board where anyone can post anything (case in point, my favorite listing ever, from the 18+ Casual Encounters section: "Man with duck fetish seeks lady with duck costume").

But one would still expect a more careful eye to detail, given the listing's origin:

The Christian Science Monitor is re-launching it's web site, www.csmonitor.com. We have an exciting opporutnity for a Web Designer!

(Note the bonus typo.)

Now, I know the Monitor, and it's rare to see a glitch in the copy. The newspaper has a reputation for striving for excellence as well as for editorial neutrality.

Could they be taking a Jeffersonian position on the matter?

In Made in America, Bill Bryson writes: "Jefferson always wrote it's for the possessive form of it, a practice that now looks decidedly illiterate. In fact, there was some logic to it. As a possessive form, the argument went, its required an apostrophe in exactly the same way as did words like children's or men's. Others contended, however, that on certain common words like ours or yours it was customary to dispense with the apostrophe, and that its belonged in this camp. By about 1815, the non-apostrophists had their way almost everywhere, but in 1776, it was a fine point, and one to which Jefferson clearly did not subscribe" (p. 43).

Is this the case here? Only the Monitor knows for sure.

Anyway, I've been rethinking my stand on the banishment of the apostrophe, especially as there are loyal lovers of punctuation struggling to keep it alive. The Apostrophe Protection Society, under the stewardship of retired journalist John Richards, collects examples of its misuse for all the world to see.

And over at Flickr, there's a whole pool of apostrophic crimes in which to wade.

So while flagrant misuse of this punctuation perturbes me, I'll consider rescinding my previous ruling. As long as there are bands of guerrilla grammaticians out there, working to promote the apostrophe's correct use, I shall allow myself to dream of a world in which even national newspapers can get it right.

The apostrophe will not exist

Heretical, no? But here's the thing: it has become quite clear to me that most people have no idea when to use it--not with the letters i-t-s, not with plurals, not with possession. So I think it will just be easier if we do away with the pesky thing altogether. Much easier than trying to educate people in its correct use.

For instance:



The next example was on display at a Pawtucket Red Sox concession window--right out in view of families and young children and everything.



It kills me that they knew to add a tilde to jalapeños, but not to treat a plural noun ending in a vowel in the same way as any other noun (peanuts they got right; fries is irregular anyway). Actually, there can't have been even that level of logic, otherwise it would be jalapeño's.

I suspect that my argument for dispensing with the apostrophe will find favor in the halls of government. There are people in power already proudly promoting its irrelevance. Like Michael McGlynn, Mayor of the City of Medford, Mass:



Ruling of the Copyeditor General: It is time to bid farewell to the apostrophe. Because if you people cannot play nicely with it, you should not be allowed to use it at all.

Professionals will deserve the title

I'm signed up for a bunch of industry newsletters on email strategy, web usability, SEO, online marketing. Every day I spend a good chunk of time reading subject lines and buh-leating those that seem irrelevant (yes, the research is correct; that is how people make their email-opening decisions). That still leaves a hearty handful that get my complete attention.

And I guess, statistically speaking, some proportion of all commercial messages are bound to contain typos and grammatical errors.

So why is it especially noticeable--or at least more likely to get me riled up--when the mistakes come from communications professionals?

From MediaPost's Search Insider newsletter of June 22:
"At more then 44.3 million, the Hispanic population is the largest of the minority groups ..."

From Sean D'Souza's Psychotactics newsletter of June 26:
"So when someone is speaking, you need to listen to what they're saying in it's entirety. "

I must point out that both of the above titles are great resources (I invariably find a useful nugget in Sean's pieces). But when fundamental goofs like these catch my eye, I lose a little trust in the overall message.

How can I accept the credibility of the views of these experts if they haven't mastered the basics?

Copyeditor General's ruling: Professional communicators should take a look through their grammar books. Or at least have a diligent proofreader read their copy before hitting the "send" button.

Daycare centers will have dictionaries

I'm on the mailing list for a local caterer/personal chef. While her emails are often informative--noting neighborhood farmers' markets, tasting nights, etc.--today's communication was promoting a fundraiser at her daughter's preschool.

The email marketing ethics (no, really, there are such things) of sending an non-business-related request for donations aside, what particularly struck me was the note about the raffle on the daycare center's website:



Copyeditor General's ruling: At birth, every child will be presented with a mandatory copy of the American Heritage Dictionary. If grown-ups can't get the hang of accurate spelling, what chance do children have?

Inaugural Deputy of the Week!

Someone signing himself "The last bastion," but with an email address suspiciously similar to that of my parents, submitted the following rant:

Basically, I'm actually really, really fed up.

I know the use of words like the above are not errors in the grammatical sense but their constant overuse makes me shout at the radio or tv so I miss the point of the discussion. Repeating words like lovely (that is a lovely, lovely dress) is the habit of gushing celebrity commentators and as such can be forgiven. What gets my goat is when hard-news readers and the like fall into the same lazy patterns or refer to children as "kids".

Do you yourself personally agree?

Yours in agreement,
The last bastion

How can I disagree with my dad? Okay, I've spent the last 30-ahem years doing so, but here he has a point. I'm sure CNN had higher grammatical standards back when it was a real news channel, but now there are typos on the ticker and high-school-level linguistic lapses.

At least now I know where I inherited the "shouting at the TV" gene.

Plus he's right about "I, personally ..."--that drives me nuts. As does "very unique," which crops up much more than it should.

Copyeditor General's ruling: People should think before they speak. Especially if they have news-anchor hair.

And yay to my dad for being the inaugural Deputy of the Week! Send me your personal goat-getters and I'll give you ranting space, too!

I should come up with some kind of shiny badge, shouldn't I?

Libraries will stay above the belt

I have a theory that cities attempting to reinvent themselves follow an almost formulaic pattern of investment in tourism. It begins with an aquarium (on the reinvigorated waterfront where applicable). Then there's a modern art museum, done in steel and glass if they can't get Gehry. And then, to illustrate liberalism and openness, a museum of erotic history appears.

There's one in Amsterdam, natch. And also in Paris, New York, Frankfurt, Berlin, Barcelona and London.

(I'm not giving you links. This is a respectable blog, mostly. Go find them yourself.)

Anyway, my point is that these new tourist attractions are largely unnecessary, because there are hundreds--nay, thousands--of libraries throughout the world already offering similar services.

At least that's how it appears, according to my research.

Copyeditor General's ruling: Librarians really need to proof their websites more carefully.

Sheep will be bold

I know sheep are, by their nature, timid beasts. But it's sad that, according to the Massachusetts Agricultural Fairs 2007 schedule, this trait is now being exploited for the benefit of onlookers.



Copyeditor General's ruling: Sheep should learn to stand up for themselves.

Signage will have universal meaning

Apologies if you already read this on LimeyG Bends Yer Lughole.

This is the warning in the parking lot at Stone Zoo:



"No live parking? What's that?" I asked The Boy.

"Dunno," he said. "Maybe it means no tailgating."

I had to search around online before I discovered it meant "no sitting in the parking lot with the engine running."

In other words, no idling.

Why couldn't they just say that? It's a much more common phrase. A Google search shows 93,000 results for "no idling," but only 30 for "no live parking." And they were almost all in Massachusetts, so it's obviously a regionalism (and therefore the logical wording to post at a location that may attract out-of-state visitors).

Copyeditor General's ruling: make sure your audience understands what you're trying to tell them.

Sigh.

On the other hand, I did get this fabulous shot of the jaguar:



Hey, I have one of those at home:

Cliché will always be a noun

You know that scene at the end of The Usual Suspects, where Agent Kujan pieces together fragments of Verbal Kint's story and realizes he's Keyser Söze? (No spoiler alert; if you haven't seen it yet, you deserve to have the twist revealed to you.)

Back in the early '90s, I found an incorrect use of the word cliché in Entertainment Weekly. And suddenly I realized I'd been seeing this over and over in print. It was beyond editorial understanding.

Examples? How about the 13,000 that appear in a Google search for "it was cliche"?

Or the 99,000 that show up for "so cliche"--one of which, on the first SERP, appears to have been written by a university librarian?

Compare these to the paltry 42,000 results for "such a cliche" and the 10,000 for "what a cliche" and it becomes clear that the majority of people writing online don't understand the simple fact that cliché is a frickin' noun.

The adjective is clichéd. With a frickin' d at the end.

Maybe part of the problem is that cliché itself has become something of a cliché.

Copyeditor General's ruling: If you can't use platitude, truism, bromide, stereotype, chestnut, or buzzword, and if you don't want to describe something as hackneyed, inane, vapid or trite, please don't say anything at all.

When I am Copyeditor General

I'm not trying to set myself up as the world authority on grammar here. There are many career copyeditors and lifelong language experts, people who know The Elements of Style by heart and can cite chapter and verse from the Chicago Manual and spend their leisure time debating the finer points of the subjunctive on discussion boards.

I don't claim to be at their level.

I have, however, spent years observing the decline of basic language proficiency, pervasive at every level of learning and communication.

I've known elementary-school teachers who couldn't spell. I've heard students in college journalism courses giggle that they "never really got the hang of punctuation." I've seen a rise in the repeated misuse of words in reputable publications.

I have no illusions. I know this blog isn't going to change anything. It's really just somewhere for me to get it off my chest.

You may encounter typos here. You'll probably find fault with some of my grammar. Feel free to complain.

And if you encounter any worthy additions to this space, please send them along. I'll make you my Deputy of the Week!