Wednesday, November 23, 2011

TV Commercials with Bad Grammar – four heard in one day!

Television commercials are created by advertizing firms.  Presumably, the writers are grammar-adept.  The following examples show that they are not. 

Borden Milk:  “Here’s to kids that follow their hearts.”
Kids are people, not objects!  “…who follow their hearts.”


 Comfy Control Harness:  “Dogs are now begging to go for a walk, because now there’s the amazing mesh Comfy Control Harness that puts a smile on their face.”
For many reasons, this is a badly written sentence.  Most irksome to me is the number-disagreement between the dogs and the body part mentioned.  Do all these dogs share one face?  Certainly not.  “…a smile on their faces.


 T-Mobile:  “Everyone’s going to want this in their stocking.”
This is another sentence exhibiting a numerical mismatch.  “Everyone” is singular; “their” is plural.  To fix this, one might change it to “Everyone’s going to want this in his or her stocking.”  It might be better, though, to remove “everyone,” and change the subject.  For example:” Your kids are going to want this in their stocking.”  But, oops! This requires another correction.  Do all the kids share the same stocking? I hope not! 

“Your kids are going to want this in their stockings.”

Motorola Droid phone:  “This droid is too powerful to fall in the wrong hands.”
If this vigorous phone is hopping about on someone’s palms, and it then falls over, the sentence makes sense.  But I doubt that this is the intended meaning. 

“This droid is too powerful to fall into the wrong hands.”

11 comments:

  1. How do you like the ad for the LUGJURIOUS BATH?
    Were they attempting to say luxurious?

    ReplyDelete
  2. How about ads that refer to something with "Which," followed by a fully independent sentence?
    Does anyone proof these ads? They must be somewhat costly. I guess no one cares.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for your comments, Marilyn. Apparently, the ad companies are too cheap to hire people to proof their scripts. If I were the director of a commercial being filmed, I would object to the poor grammar in the text.

    ReplyDelete
  4. How about commercials using the word 'less' followed by a plural noun instead of 'fewer' followed by a plural noun. The rule is simple: Less=singular, Fewer=plural.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The term "on accident" in a John Deere commercial makes my head explode.

    ReplyDelete
  6. to Unknown: "Fewer" is required for a quantity of items that can be individually counted. Examples are "Use this lane if you have fewer than 10 items..."; I have fewer students than you do."
    "Less" is used for a substance that is measured rather than individually counted. "Use less sugar in the recipe." "There is less soil in the green planter."

    ReplyDelete
  7. AllenArt: "On accident" just sounds juvenile, doesn't it? Four-year-olds talk like that.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Why does "Can I get my Aleve back YET" sound so awkward to me?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Why does "Can I get my Aleve back YET" sound so awkward to me?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well, Peggy, there is just so much wrong with the entire sentence! If we were to completely correct the grammatical errors in the Aleve sentence, we might come up with this: "May I please have my Aleve back now?"
    The speaker is asking for her medication to be returned to her. "May I" would be correct. Saying "can I" indicates that she's wondering if she is physically able receive it.
    "Back yet" does sound awkward. The "yet" is not needed; eliminating that word would help.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hello. Joanna Griggs' from 'House Rules' use of 'congraDulations' rather than 'congratulations' and 'luGJury' rather than 'luxury' is highly irritating. The weather person from 'Sunrise' persists in covering the weather outlook for 'OSHtralia'. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete