Plummeting writing standards in advertisements

[Standalone]

And I have always said regardless and/or irregardless. I guess it's a southern thing?

Might be. It's a sure fire red flag to grammar nazis like myself. But you do have to step carefully in this kind of thread. It sounded like you were being down on immigrants/minorities/blacks or something for their poor grammar and cushy affirmative action lives or something. In a post full of errors! I'm just sayin'....

 

[Standalone]

"A USB" is actually correct. A/an usage is based on phonetics, not spelling. If the first syllable starts w/ a vowel sign, you use "an", if it is a consonant sound, you use "a." So you have things like "an honorable" and "a one" because of the sounds.

grammar is cool.

 

[rcarraher]

Braille? Wow, now I feel bad. Sorry, bro!

Don't feel bad, after all it was me who was too lazy to use the Spell Check. Just cause it tickels my finger instead of my retinas is no excuse. By the way, thoughyt you might like this from todays story on Madoff...."His immediately family did not attend the sentencing." Hmmm, maybe they'll attend later?

 

[rcarraher]

I think the internet has a large role in this. Kids misspell stuff, and it used to be teachers would correct them. With the internet, it's pretty easy to unlearn the stuff. Kids just spell stuff out however they think it's spelled/however they want to, and the only people there to correct them are grammar Nazis. They have no respect for these people, so don't bother correcting anything.

I've been using forums for about 6 years, but I know of plenty of people that have been doing so and also using chat rooms since about 2000. These people are now working age, and likely are the new kids on the block when it comes to professions requiring some kind of English studies. They don't care about the stuff.

Also, the "big" demographic that companies seem to want are not the ones with money, but 18 to 34 year olds. I've seen shows cancelled that had good ratings, but those ratings came from people in their 30's to 50's. When you consider how many people in the target demographic no longer care about spelling and grammar, who wins? The cheap guy who also doesn't care, or the guy who take the time to get stuff right?

I've had people tell me that there used to be high school classes on penmanship and spelling. No such thing exists any more.

I know of which you speak, and here's the sad thing. A large number of our educational institutes don't care about spelling and grammer either. I spent from 1986 through a good protion of 1999 teaching at three different midwestern state supported universities. A technical field, so I wasn't looking for the next great American Novel, but on my essasy test questions I would mark off points for spelling and wildly bad garmmer. Not much, but up to five points out of a hundred.

This could be enough to take some one from a perfect score to just an A or from barely passing to a failing grade, but it wasn't ridiculous. Besides the fields, electrical enigeering and computer science both involve a great deal of precision, so I didn't think it out of line to ask for precision in the written word. The university came to me in late '97 or early '98 and told me NOT to mark down for these mistakes! To not even consider them in my grading. And I wasn't teaching freshman, I was teaching people going for their masters.

 

[jaywa]

Agreed. Back in the early 90s I was a Teaching Assistant for what was reputed to be one of the more academically sound Big Ten Universities. I was in charge of three sections of what was essentially a freshman Speech & Writing class. I simply could not believe the poor quality of papers and speeches many of those students turned in. You literally could not follow what they were trying to say, not to mention grammar, punctuation, spelling etc. which were just atrocious. Many times I wondered how any educational system could have let some of those people get out of high school without even a basic ability to write or speak coherently. And these weren't just the football players either (though I had a few of those), these were future engineers and business people.

 

[Absentia]

I've been noticing the same, even on billboards and O'reilly books.
My bosses daughter has a masters in education and english, yet most of her emails you can't even understand.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

What I'm waiting for is the day some proofreader for a high-profile publication doesn't catch a missing "L" in "PUBLIC". I.e., "Pubic Education". That will be good humor, right there.

About five years ago, or so, at the NAMM show in Anaheim there was a Chinese company in Hall E displaying paging horns and other low-grade, institutional-type PA system components. They had a stack of black-and-white catalogs on the counter that said "PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEMS" on the front cover--except on each one the word "PUBLIC" was written in black marker on a white label. I picked one up and peeled the label off. Guess what was printed underneath?

 

[Yngwie 4String]

I reckon they are more worried about building quality products than putting out grammatically perfect catalogues.

 

[Blackbird]

Just read some of the writing posted on this thread!

Fixed it for you.

I was quoting the post about the painters that painted "SOCHOL" on the road down here in Miami/Dade co.
As far as my spelling , I am on a puter at work, with out spell check, But that is still no excuse. And I have always said regardless and/or irregardless. I guess it's a southern thing?

Please do not blame your apparent spelling issues on the region you are from. There are plenty of folks in your area with a more than adequate command of the English language.

And no offense, but as far as the "racially-motivated hiring" remark, you have to agree that so far you have not exactly proven to us that you would be capable of doing any better...

Part of the problem is that people have lost their love for reading. If people spent more time exercising their minds with books (make that good books) instead of passively absorbing mindless entertainment from TV, this problem would not be as rampant.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Another one of my adspeak favorites: "Savings up to 50% off or more".

Notwithstanding the redundancy of the word "off" (you already told me I'm saving money), what exactly is the amount I'm saving? "Up to" implies 50% is the limit... but it may be more than that. Huh? Whatever...

I think it means you can save any percentage except 50%.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Part of the problem is that people have lost their love for reading. If people spent more time exercising their minds with books (make that good books) instead of passively absorbing mindless entertainment from TV, this problem would not be as rampant.

I agree. I've usually been very good at spelling, but I've also found that it starts going away if I go a while without reading much.

 

[jaywa]

I reckon they are more worried about building quality products than putting out grammatically perfect catalogues.

Doesn't mean it isn't funny, though.

 

[hbarcat]

I reckon they are more worried about building quality products than putting out grammatically perfect catalogues.

When they put out catalogs saturated with ridiculously bad grammar and spelling, they should be worried about losing customers who might conclude that they are less than competent.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

When they put out catalogs saturated with ridiculously bad grammar and spelling, they should be worried about losing customers who might conclude that they are less than competent.

+1

 

[SteveC]

Lowest Common Denominator. Advertisers are just using the language that their target audience is using. No one uses real writing or language any more. It's all abbreviated, texted, shortened, etc. Sign o' the times.

 

[totallyfrozen]

Um...sorry, but this is such a target I can't help it...

grammer = grammAr
apalled = apPalled
decypherable = decIpherable

"Things that wouldn't have gotten past my second grade teacher. Spelling, run on sentences, incomplete or badly fractured sentence."

You have two fractured sentences with a missing plural on "sentence" at the end of the second fractured sentence.

Otherwise, I totally agree with you...good gramer iz ded.

EDIT: I just noticed you used the word "fractured" when you meant "fragmented." Not a biggie...I got the meaning, but if we're calling out grammar problems, let's be complete

BTW, I am not a grammar nazi and I'm pretty forgiving of spelling and grammatical errors on forum posts. But I totally agree that professional writing should be held to a much higher standard.

Ow!

 

[Blackbird]

Lowest Common Denominator. Advertisers are just using the language that their target audience is using. No one uses real writing or language any more. It's all abbreviated, texted, shortened, etc. Sign o' the times.

So what you're saying is that businesses are trying to boost their sales by acknowledging their clientele's lack of education?

 

[JansenW]

I've also heard bad grammar used in TV news reporting.

 

[hbarcat]

Lowest Common Denominator. Advertisers are just using the language that their target audience is using. No one uses real writing or language any more. It's all abbreviated, texted, shortened, etc. Sign o' the times.

I've noticed this same trend in TV commercials. Many companies portray their customers as mentally deficient - 30 second skits where some idiot (literally) has to be force fed the simplest information about the product, repeated over and over, while we - the audience - are supposed to laugh because he is so stupid as to not get it.

What's the message, here - their customers have to be morons?

 

[syciprider]

So what you're saying is that businesses are trying to boost their sales by acknowledging their clientele's lack of education?

No, they are musicians. Or drummers even.