Saturday, May 21, 2011

When educated people sound dumb…

Stephanie Abrams is a meteorologist on The Weather Channel.  Unfortunately, she speaks like a grammar-challenged teenager:  “Me and Jen were both posting on Twitter and Facebook how that relates to the past year…  (May 18, 2011)

Jeopardy contestants are smart, right?  Beverly Jones, a contestant on Jeopardy, is a lawyer.  She made this verbal faux-pas on the show that aired May 18, 2011:  “Me and my husband Alex cut our wedding cake with my father’s dress sword…” 

The character Carlos, on Desperate Housewives, said, “Me and the girls were talking about my mother’s death.”  (May 2011)  Carlos is a businessman of some sort, so a reasonably intelligent and educated man, we assume.  The dumbos here are the writers who allow him to speak this way.

All of these people, real and fictional, should know better than to use “me” as the subject of a sentence or phrase.  By their poor examples, they are teaching kids that this is OK.  It’s NOT OK!   Me am exasperated.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Smart Pad, Dumb Ad

First, visualize an iPad with family photos on the screen.  Then you see what looks like a sound system control board on the smart device.  Next is an ultrasound image of a fetus, followed by regional sales graphs, cells dividing, and an alphabet picture book.

The following mess is the text of this television commercial for iPad 2. 
 
If you ask a parent, they might call it intuitive.

If you ask a musician, they might call it inspiring.

To a doctor, it’s groundbreaking.

To a CEO, it’s powerful.

To a teacher, it’s the future.

If you ask a child, she might call it magic.

If you asked us, we’d say, “It’s just getting started.”
 
If you ask me, I'd say the advertising agency has a serious writing and editing deficiency.  A professional writer was hired to craft this?  Why the inconsistent pronoun use?  They is plural, of course.  The writer needs to choose either he or she for the parent.  Is the musician a he or a she? Pick one!  The ad author finally gets it right at the end, selecting she for the child.
 
Not wishing to declare the sex of the unknown person, the timid writer could opt to use the construction of the middle sentences throughout the piece…
(To a doctor, it’s groundbreaking.  To a CEO, it’s powerful.  To a teacher, it’s the future.)
…and avoid making any gender choices at all.
 
As it is written, the script is faulty.  The commercial is defective; smart people might be turned off to the product, too.