From the Grammar Police
EEK! I’m haunted by chronic chronics!
Dr. Baruch Kahana
A season never will be able to stream. A hotel can’t seek approval. An operation can’t be ordered to begin. A man can’t be ordered to be released. A barracks can’t be directed to open early. And copays never will be required to do anything.
Again with the congratulations! Please. You congratulate someone for finishing college. For winning a race. For getting a promotion. Something earned. Not for successfully finishing the eSign process. OK?
Hopefully still doesn’t mean we hope! And thankfully still doesn’t mean we’re thankful that... You gaze hopefully at the Statue of Liberty. You thankfully hug your benefactor. Will people ever get this right? We hope.
Like means different but similar to. So this would mean interest from many teams like the Maple Leafs, but not the Maple Leafs. You should say, “clubs such as the Maple Leafs.”
We’ve covered this before. Of nine older adults, how many live in poverty? Right. One. So, 1 in 9 older adults lives in poverty.
We’ve talked about using too many qualifiers, a form of cowardly writing. Actually, ten of ten men may have this disease. Right? (Actually, it’s might or could.) How about: “As many as one in ten men has…disease.”
It might be that we already have lost this battle. An appointment is a reservation. You make an appointment for a visit. After that, someone will make sure you arrive at your next visit.
In September 2024, we talked about people not being truthful in their writing. You were asked to rate your customer service call. But when you clicked, you got this, which asks only whether you’d recommend these guys. Not the same thing.
How many times have people messed up bullet points? (Or, in this case, check marks.) Right now, it reads:
Built on your land.
Built on on time.
Built on on budget.
Here’s how it should have read:
BUILT:
On your land
On time
On budget
We’ve posted this once a year since we started “Horribly Wrong” in January 2020. The ad never has changed. It STILL says “ten million dollars dollars.”
One more time: You could not care less.
And we go to the video archives for Segment 93: Tropes
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police.” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, menus, TV news graphics, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we can credit you properly. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!