Ads, TV shows offer lessons in poor grammar
Mistakes in spelling and punctuation prompt brands to make quick changes
As kids gear up for another school year, they might discover commercials and TV shows provide both deliberate and unwitting lessons in grammar.
Take, for example, a particular episode of Game of Thrones, in which Stannis Baratheon corrects the common confusion between "less" and "fewer" – as it pertains to missing fingers.
Grammar mistakes are also common in advertising. Last year, U.K. supermarket Tesco was called out by a teen boy for an error on an orange juice label.
Similarly, Old Navy had to send back an entire shipment of T-shirts when it realized the lettering on the front contained an error. The shirts read "Lets Go!," omitting the apostrophe.
Other grammar issues are more subtle and open to interpretation.
Using "and/or" along with "both" provides us with a classic example of redundancy.
In North America, using a plural verb for a singular corporate entity — as in "Red Rose have discovered" — is widely seen as incorrect. But in the U.K. — as in this commercial with chef Jamie Oliver — such usage is common and considered correct.
Of course, this sudden shift from singular to plural may not be sloppiness or a nod to common usage. It may actually represent a growing empathy for people who feel excluded by the pronouns "he" or "she," as this descriptivist linguist explains.
Bruce Chambers is a syndicated advertising columnist for CBC Radio.