Should weekly grocery-store ads count as low-hanging fruit and thus be excluded from the wrath of GRAMMARGEDDON!? (Hmm . . . note to self: don’t end a question with the name of the blog again.)
Well, here’s one, anyway, sent in by my old college pal Kevin, who apparently received the ad in his email. It’s from the H-E-B chain of grocery stores in Texas, which I had not heard of before. Can you spot the typo in the ad? I’d so it to you, but that would cheat you out of the fun of finding it yourself. Okay, okay, there are at least two things wrong in the ad, but I’m talking about the most obvious error.
Is this too nitpicky of us? I don’t think so. It’s just another example of a blatant typo that really should have been caught—and it probably would have been, if it weren’t for those meddling kids! Er, I mean, if anyone at H-E-B had spent 10 seconds reading over the ad. But they probably just ran a spellcheck and called it a day.
This lowly typo reinforces one of our blog’s main points: if you can’t be bothered to check your work for errors and present a professional front when communicating, you can’t expect people to treat you professionally.
Sorry, H-E-B. And thanks, Kevin!
Wow. That’s–yeah.
And no, I don’t think grocery ads should be excluded. They’re not in the same category as classifieds. As you point out, one expects a level of professionalism from a company’s advertising.
Sock it to ’em.
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Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the other thing wrong in the ad?
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The other problem I had in mind was the comma after “Wait” in “Wait, so me a sample.” I’d say that because “Wait” is an imperative that can stand on its own and “so me a sample” is a complete sentence that can stand on its own (if we ignore the typo), a comma is not sufficient to join them. I personally would use an em-dash, but you could also use a period, semicolon, or exclamation point.
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