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.”

There is no reason for "their."

“Now for the first time, hear secrets from the first Madoff family member to break their silence,”  says the ABC announcer in a promo for “20/20.”  Shown are interview shots that clearly depict Madoff daughter-in-law, Stephanie Madoff.  A female.  So why use the clumsy and ungrammatical their instead of her?  There is no excuse. 

Another Stinking Ad

A Pampers diaper commercial shows cute babies in various play activities.  The voice says, "Every baby plays by his own rules..."  (so far, so good...)  "...and they need a diaper that lets them do it."
Ouch! Why did the writer start out well, using correct noun/pronoun agreement (the singular baby + his), but then blow it by throwing plural pronouns in there?  (they and them, but still referring to the singular "baby").  How do ad writers get away with this?

I railed against the mixed-pronoun iPad ad.  It disappeared, and was replaced by one that doesn't offend the grammar-sensitive.  I hope this painful Pampers ad is recalled, as well.

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.

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.

A grammar fumble on Kirstie's tumble!

Another ‘Dancing’ Mishap for Kirstie

ABC

After last week’s tumble, her and Maks were hoping for an error-free dance, but things didn’t go as planned.

Oh, dear! -- We have a dance mishap for Kirstie, and a pronoun mishap for the writer.  A fellow grammar crusader caught this gaffe on her AOL home page this morning.  Others must have notified AOL, because the article has been rewritten.  The replacement may or may not have been written by the original scripter, so I won't place blame on anyone.  But I'll bet that the reporter is in the under-age-35 category.  Many in this group seem to have never learned that "her," "him," and "me" are not subject pronouns.  Ouch!

May I order some "American English?"

This complaint is not about a poorly written television script, but I couldn’t resist a departure from that topic.  A short segment on the local news last evening told of a North Carolina restaurant owner who had posted a sign forbidding service to those who do not speak English.

The shameless boldness of the proprietor is stunning enough.  His obtuseness is made worse by his display of ignorance of foreign languages and his own so-called “American English.”

The sign attempts to tell customers, in six languages, that they are not welcome if they don’t speak English.  Two of the languages, Russian and Irish Gaelic, I don’t know enough about to critique the restaurant owner’s rendering of them.  However, here are the attempts to inform speakers of French, German, Spanish, and “American,” with his helpful parenthetic explanations:

N parler français, pas de service.

(French)

Kein Deutsch sprechen.  Kein service.

(German)

No hablar español.  Sin servicio.

(Spanish)

Wrong, wrong, wrong!  That the printed texts utilize the cedilla and the tilde (Also, the Russian text appears in Cyrillic characters.) leads me to assume that the sign maker used an online translator—Not a reliable translation method.

            But here is the best: 

No speak English.  No Service

(American English)

The restaurant owner has now removed the sign, after much criticism.  He says that he posted it in frustration after a group of Spanish-speaking patrons had difficulty ordering.  We don’t expect the guy to have a translator on staff, but at least he could get a better command of his own language!

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/03/16/speak-english-service-sign-removed-north-carolina-restaurant/