Don’t Forget to “Buy” Our “Product!”
So I was walking down the streets of New York the other day and passed by a sign outside of a restaurant that said:
We now have “sushi.”
What does that mean? Since quotes are generally used to connote irony or something unusual about the word (when not actually quoting something or someone), I have got to assume that whatever they’re selling is, in fact, NOT sushi, but some parody thereof.
I know I’m a little nitpicky when it comes to little stuff like spelling and grammar, and usually I just snicker at emails from friends (or strangers) and get on with my life. But when someone is trying to sell me something, the least I expect them to do is use proper English. When they don’t, I lose respect for them as a credible vendor, and they lose my business.
For instance, I’ve been receiving all sorts of advertisements in the mail for various bridal-related services: photography, limousines, flowers, etc. One such envelope, upon opening, contained a letter, which read:
Hello Future Bride,
We are a new store which opened recently in May of 2005.
Besides a complete variety of accessories and gift box rentals (bridal doll is our newest), we hand craft your bridal veil “custom” to your exact detail or you can “Rent” A Bridal Veil that we have in stock!
This being the first thing I read, I was terribly confused. May 2005 isn’t that recent. Okay, it’s not quite a year old, so maybe “recently” is still an acceptable word. But either way, why not just say “opened recently” or “opened in May of 2005,” thus eliminating confusion?
The second sentence really doesn’t make very much sense either. Someone clearly didn’t have to diagram sentences in 6th grade, because this one is a mess. According to that sentence, I have to assume they handcraft accessories and gift box rentals, which has got to be difficult. And what the hell is “bridal doll?” Is it a gift box rental? Do they make gift boxes with little dolls dressed up as brides inside? Does the box look like a doll? Do they rent the doll?
The point of the next part of the sentence, I’m sure, is that they will customize a bridal veil for me. But apparently they only need one detail in order to do so. Do I get to pick the detail? That’s why “custom” is in quotation marks, right? Because if I only give them one detail, then it’s not really that customized, right? Right?
If they want me to “rent” a bridal veil, does that mean it’s not really a rental? Do I get to keep it longer than most rentals? Is it like a car lease or something, where there’s a buy-in agreement at the end? Maybe the reason “A Bridal Veil” is capitalized is that it’s patented and I’m renting their product but also advertising for them.
The letter goes on (I won’t quote the whole thing), but it ends with this gem:
And when your wedding is over, I offer “hand” cleaning and preservation of your bridal gown and formal gown cleaning using no machinery or excessive heat, which causes damage.
So somewhere in the middle of the letter, the pronouns switch from “we” to “I.” That’s only slightly bothersome, though: the really scary idea is the “‘hand’ cleaning.” Once again, is that an ironic remark? Maybe they don’t use their hands; maybe they use their feet. That would certainly be different, something to set themselves apart from the pack.
The way the punctuation stands at the moment, they offer preservation of not only your bridal gown but also your formal gown cleaning. How they preserve cleaning, I’m not sure, but however they do it, they use no machinery or excessive heat. I suppose that’s a plus. They never tell me what it causes damage to, but I suppose we all can guess that they’re talking about the gown, not the person doing the cleaning.
Now that my rant is over, I will leave you with this picture I took after I saw the “sushi” sign (I should have taken a picture of the “sushi” sign, but it didn’t occur to me until later). It’s not the same problem, but it is yet another example of a well-meaning, English-challenged company trying to do some advertising.
Why did it take me so long to catch this?
After watching Ray watch The Incredibles for the umpteenth time, I realized that there is a MAJOR grammar blooper in a movie that will probably be influencing the way kids speak. When Mr. Incredible gets his first assignment from Mirage, she says, “We have something in common. According to the government, neither of us exist.” I think it bugged me when I first saw it and maybe the second time, but I must have tuned it out the next 15 or 16 times it’s been on the TV.
Yo, Disney/Pixar people!!! Your verb must agree with its subject. “Neither” is singular, and therefore the correct wording is “neither of us exists.” Why did no one over there catch that? Is it in the script and Elizabeth Peña just didn’t speak English too well and nobody bothered to correct her? I’m also a little shocked that there aren’t any forums or blogs or any kind of commentary out in the great wide world of cyberspace about it either. Well, if no one else will speak up about it, I suppose I must.
Okay, I think I’ve seen this movie one too many times. I’m going to go do my taxes now…that should calm me down.
Filed under Grammar, Movies | Comments (3)Purgatory
Most of the time, I’m very happy with my transcription job. I get flexible hours, it’s close to home (sometimes I even get to work from home), and although I wish I was getting paid more, I’m not starving to death on my salary. There are the occasional inaudible meetings that get me frustrated, but then again, there are all sorts of interesting things I learn about when I’m transcribing meetings with doctors who are trying to cure cancer, meetings with bankers trying to make more money, interviews with crack and heroine addicts on the streets, and auto insurance claims. And between the oncologists and the crackheads, I have added a plethora of new words to my vocabulary.
But sometimes there are some seriously tedious jobs, and I happen to be taking a quick break from one of them right now. Sometimes we get medical or technical writers who have to interview an expert (doctor, computer guy, whatever) in order to write a white paper or a research grant, and they have to ask some pretty stupid questions if they want the whole story. I have a new respect for interviewers now, because it’s a tough job, and if you’re bad at making somebody open up, you’re screwed. This guy I’m doing right now is actually a pretty good interviewer, but the subject matter (which is confidential, of course), is about the most BORING thing ever. I’m literally falling asleep while typing. Do you know how embarrassing it is to wake up to find that you’ve misspelled almost an entire paragraph?
It doesn’t help that the sound quality is poor and they’ve got the window open, so I can hear the traffic and the wind and the occasional siren better than I can hear the interviewee. But I’m thinking that even if the sound quality were better, I still would fall asleep. It’s obvious he’s interested in this topic, but I can’t see why. Typing this job reminds me of the reason why I was never any good in chemistry in high school: it was right after lunch, the teacher had a very slow, quiet voice, and he’d always turn the lights off and show us slides.
The sad thing is, I think there are three more hours left to transcribe…wake me up when I’m done.
Filed under Blogging, Grammar, Transcription | Comment (0)Nerdiness to the nth degree
So I’ve been in rehearsals for an upcoming concert that includes works by Poulenc, Distler, and many others. The Distler is a gorgeous collection of variations of “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,” or, for those non German-speakers out there, “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming.” And very luckily for us, we have a native German in our midst to coach us in our pronunciation. Now, our de facto German coach has been harping upon our conductor to pronounce the name Distler as “Dees-tler,” contrary to what one would normally pronounce that word if it weren’t a proper noun.
Likewise, I’ve been very quietly (more like under my breath or with a few of the members of my section) been correcting our conductor’s pronunciation of the Poulenc, which, at first glance, might seem to be pronounced “Poo-lonk” (or as one would annotate in IPA, [pu-lãk]), but in fact, the correct pronunciation is “Poo-lenk” [pu-lɛ̃k]. Except I guess I wasn’t so quiet the other night because I opened my big mouth and corrected our dear conductor, who apparently had said it wrong on the radio, and I got some snarkiness from a few singers of, “Well, it’s not Elvish, so how would you know?”
So to that, I say: tomato, to-mah-toe, [pu-lɛ̃k], [di-stlÉ™], let’s call the whole thing off.
Filed under Grammar, Singing | Comment (0)Mr. & Mrs. Malaprop Strike in Tandem
Caution: if you are easily offended at people making fun of spelling errors, do not read this post.
I know I’m a snob. I freely admit it. Spelling and grammar matter to me, and I don’t care who knows it. I’m the person who finds and points out the typos in menus. I think it’s a family thing, because the other day, my brother and I were in a New York deli and snickered together at the rows upon rows of individually labeled “Pumpkin Laof” and “Zucchini Laof.”
So when my friend, Mr. Malaprop, sent out another one of his updates, I was once again amused at his witless spelling. Throughout his email, he continually mentions his search for leather “bottels,” which, when I first saw the word, figured it was a typo. But he consistently spelled it that way throughout the entire letter, even using different forms of the word, like “bottelmaker.” Because he was trying to do some research into the history of bottlemaking, I thought perhaps he was quoting a 15th century spelling of the word, but when he did actually quote a piece of literature, he spelled the word correctly. Go figure.
I have another friend (or, as she would put it, “freind”) who throws all spelling rules out the window when she types, and it’s almost an art form how she finds new spellings for words. I was recently invited to a party of hers where the subject of the invitation itself reads, “Not having enought [sic] fun?” I am having fun now. Ooh, write something else. Please, please write something else. I haven’t had a good giggle since…since Mr. Malaprop sent me something!
Filed under Bizarre, Blogging, Grammar | Comments (3)Mr. Malaprop, Part Deux
So my friend of the malapropisms has struck again. He sent out a very serious email talking about how the son of his friend just died of cancer. But this is a line that had me snickering at the image it conjured up (not to mention the really confusing grammar at the beginning of the sentence):
I know the how many times that as [name withheld] and I
passed in the shire I hugged her and hopped to impart
some strength to her.
Um, I don’t know about you, but whenever I impart strength to people, I like to hop. It’s really the most effective way to show that I really care. In fact, I’m hopping right now, just for you. Okay, I’ve stopped hopping, because my leg is tired.
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a little punchy because I just got back from a long day of singing. I had a dress rehearsal in the afternoon; then I had to rush to church to sing for the Ash Wednesday service. So I’m pooped and just a little bit silly.
Filed under Grammar | Comment (0)Mr. Malaprop
A former leatherboy and current friend of mine keeps me up to date of his goings-on with regular mass emails. He’s much more of a regular communicator than I am, but I do wish he’d use spell check (or even a dictionary now and again). Then again, I’m kind of glad he doesn’t, because his malapropisms make me giggle:
Skiing - Not yet but soon. cannot wait. Im still
taunting, cajoling and generally making a nuance of
myself to the various snow demons.
How does one make a nuance of one’s self, I wonder? Do you just stand there in the background for a while and stay in the demon’s peripheral vision?
Filed under Blogging, Grammar | Comment (0)