Bad Grammar in Advertising: Examples
According to Nicole Kelly’s (2010) article about the importance of correct and appropriate English grammar in businesses, it was stated that customers will always be looking for ways or reasons to buy and reasons not to buy a product they are seeing in advertisements. Advertisements will most likely be the one to create a customer’s first impression for a company and you could actually imagine what that impression would be if there were wrong sentences, poor grammar and some misspelled words in an advertisement.
A common example of an incorrectly used grammar in advertising would look like this: Sign’s. If we are to correct this grammar, it should be a simple “Professional Signs& Lettering”. The mistake was actually made because an apostrophe is not really an appropriate punctuation to place using that thought.
Another good example is this: Pie’s and Burgers. Instead of Pies & Burgers, the owner actually placed an apostrophe between the letters “e” and “s” which is obviously wrong. Even if the name of the business owner is “Pie”, the resulting phrase still wouldn’t make sense. It should instead be “Pies and Burgers”.
For a different example, take a look at this: Funner than fun. Grammatically wrong advertisements like these are usually common in televisions and in the internet. When translated into a grammatically correct phrase, it should appear “Funnier than Fun” or the “the fun “part could actually be removed or replaced with other choices of words. In general, a businesses or firm’s reputation would usually get affected especially if something better is being expected of them. Although it was stated by S. Bing’s article (2007) in the internet that even smart people use bad grammar, it would still be proper for businesses to use formal English.
References
N. Kelly (2010, Nov 19). Editing Web Sites for Success: Does Bad Grammar Really Matter? Retrieved from http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2010/11/19/editing-web-sites-for-success-does-bad-grammar-really-matter.aspx
S. Bing (2007, July 24). When Smart People Use Bad Grammar. Retrieved from http://stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/07/24/when-smart-people-have-bad-grammar/
