We all know how important it is to get our marketing messages across clearly, and some of you eagle eyed readers may have spotted this recent picture on my Facebook page…
At a first glance, this suggests to me that presenting the voucher will get you one free child, and at a saving of £9.50, that’s a bargain for a completely new member of the family!
My mother has been picking me up on any and all misuse of the English language since I was a child, and that’s probably why I’m such a pedant now (I should point out she still tells me off for using the word ‘hopefully’ incorrectly in a sentence, so I’m very careful not to use it in her presence). One of her bugbears is the use of the phrase, ‘for free’, when it should be ‘free of charge’ or ‘for nothing’. The picture above commits a similar wording crime, so my suggestion is that it should be re-worded as ‘1 free child place’ or ‘1 child goes free’ – what do you think?
This is why it’s so important to get somebody else at least to glance over your copy and content before it goes out to the wider world. If there’s any chance that what you’re saying could be misconstrued in any way, you might have looked at it so many times that you’re no longer noticing the mistakes, and somebody else will be seeing things with a fresh pair of eyes. I know I will be reading this post several times over before hitting ‘publish’, and even then I will worry about the odd typo.
And if you’re at all unsure about your spelling, punctuation and grammar, regardless of what you’re writing, it goes without saying that you should be getting somebody to proofread your work.
I’ve still been busy looking out for misplaced apostrophes on my travels, and this one is a recent favourite.
They nearly made it! So near and yet so far….plus you only get one cappuccino.
I’d love to see some more #apostrophefails, so if you spot one when you’re out and about, please pop over to my Facebook page and share your findings!