On the Stump
Not the Democrats worst nightmare. This candidate is the Democrat’s worst nightmare. No, that’s wrong. There’s more than one Democrat. Should be “Democrats’ worst nightmare.” (An aside: “Worst nightmare” is a cliché. Also, what would be your best nightmare?)
Same campaign. Only candidate who keeps Biden up. “That” for objects, “who” for people.
We’ve covered this before. “Like” means “similar to.” So this ad says we need to elect people who are similar to this guy. Which means other than this guy. Probably not what the campaign meant. Should be, “…send experienced leaders such as XXX to Congress.”
The past tense of “lead” is “led.” You learned that in fourth grade.
And we go to the video archives for Segment 25: Bad anatomy. https://youtu.be/mGbzbheMs0E
Calling all readers! Do you cringe when someone spells Jimmy Buffett as Buffet? Or describes someone from the Philippines as “Philippine” — or worse, “Phillipine” — instead of “Filipino”? Send your examples of bad spellings and identifications of people. places and things to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
From the mailbag: Our Aug. 14, 2022, post on “unforced errors” prompted loyal reader Mark McKee to suggest "could of, would of, should of" were corruptions of “could've, would've, should've.” Mark, you might be on to something!
Grovel: Some of you might have spotted the goof in our Aug. 21 post. (We fixed it online but it went through in the mailing). The post said an ad ran “a year ago yesterday, on Sept. 4, 2021. “ We originally had planned to post that in our Sept. 4, 2022, segment. We decided to move it up but forgot to fix the date reference. And the previous post was on Sept. 5, 2021. Our bad!
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong" features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police.” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, menus, TV news graphics, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!