Sticks and stones may break your bones but bad language can completely destroy your best-laid campaign plans
Writing the content for a professional project requires professional writing skills. Poor grammar, bad spelling and clumsy sentence construction can make an otherwise professional campaign look amateur.
The sad fact of the matter is many a big-budget, big-team campaign project has humiliated itself with the most basic failures. Could you sign-off a project confident that all the ‘t’s are crossed and the ‘i’s dotted? Try this simple quiz:
PROFESSIONAL APOSTROPHE FAILURES: Only one of these four album sleeves has the correct punctuation
Apostrophes mark contractions / omissions or possession. Describing the decade of the eighties numerically, the correct punctuation is '80s – the apostrophe marks the omitted '19'. Answer number two has the honour of a double failure – 80's is the classic inappropriate singular possessive (aka 'greengrocer's' apostrophe) and 'Worlds' SHOULD be the singular possessive 'World's'
SHOW SOME INTEREST: Your friend is impartial and you ask for their opinion. They answer but find your conundrum boring. Which of the following best describes their position?
To say someone is 'disinterested' means they have no vested interest in the outcome and are, thus, unbiased. To say they are 'uninterested' means they just don't give a toss. In this case, your friend fulfils both categories.
MAYBE, OR MAY BE? Or maybe not
Do you need an adverb or a modal on your verb? Here's a simple test; swap in the word 'perhaps' in place of maybe / may be in your sentence and if it still makes sense, then you need 'maybe'. If it doesn't, then you need 'may be'.
WHAT SHOULD YOU DO? Well, don't be writing about T&C's or looking in the FAQ's...
Apostrophes mark omissions or possession. There is no possession in this phrase and only one omission in the contraction of 'do not' to 'don't'. Like the abbreviations of Terms & Conditions (T&Cs) and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), the use of capitals – DOs and DON'Ts – helps it make sense to the eye that does not know punctuation
How did you score?
These questions cover the most basic but most common failures in published English and are found often in otherwise professional material. If you got any of them wrong, then you should not sign-off on any copy you are committing to publication.
Can you see the grammatical error in this poster? TfL didn’t and the poster had to be pulped at a cost of £100,000. Click here for an explanation
Paying for poor language
Is it really worth you investing in the services of a professional writer? Well, that depends on how comfortably you can afford to absorb the consequences of bad copy.
At the lowest level, there will be customers who did not bother to contact you because they take the poor quality of your prose as indicative of the quality of your service or product as a whole. At the other end of the scale, you could end up having to scrap an entire project at considerable expense.
When Transport For London (TfL) published a poster with a plural-singular subject-verb disagreement in the copy, the error slipped past everyone involved in the marketing project, from the copywriter who made the gaffe, all the way to whoever signed the poster off for print. This was a big budget project manned by people who really ought to know better.
Poor grammar is expensive
Once the posters were up, the public, rather than being impressed with TfL’s money management, took to social media to flag up the poor grammar – not quite the message this campaign was supposed to deliver. The posters were pulled and pulped and that grammatical error cost TfL £100,000 and a lot of wasted time and effort.
When you are selling yourself in global news channels as: ‘business intelligence software that helps people see and understand their data,’ you might want to see and understand basic punctuation
Writing is an art and while you don’t necessarily need a Pulitzer Price-winning journalist crafting your copy, you do need a copywriter for your project as much as you do a designer. Don’t discredit your campaign with simple, grammatical errors; have your copy sub-edited by a professional.
Here at Graphic Violence, we’ll take a look at your copy and advise, free of charge. Call 07970 181184 for more information.
Spot the expensive mistake
Are you single?
This TfL poster is troubled by a plural-singular subject-verb argument. Companies are singular, TfL is one company so the slogan on the poster should read that way. The ‘we’ and ‘our’ are plural so we need to change these to singular: ‘TfL doesn’t make a profit because it reinvests all of its income to run and improve your services.’
Starbucks is a coffee shop franchise, not Starbucks are. Colloquially, people tend to think of a company in the plural, especially if its name feels plural. To check your sentence, substitute ‘David’ for the name of the company and see if it makes sense.
Marks & Spencer is having a sale ✔
David is having a sale. ✔
McDonald’s are hiring new staff ❌
David are hiring new staff ❌
▲ back to storyRead more
- What is the ‘Greengrocer’s’ apostrophe? – Oxford Dictionary
- ‘Hello, death’: Coca-Cola mixes English and Māori on vending machine – The Guardian
- Maybe or may be? – Cambridge Dictionary
- TfL poster campaign containing embarrassing grammar mistake cost nearly £100,000 – Evening Standard
- 20 of the Worst Typos, Grammatical Errors & Spelling Mistakes We’ve Ever Seen – HubSpot
- Bad grammar: rogue apostrophes and bizarre spelling – in pictures – The Guardian
