‘Tis the season for giving. And for goofs!

We’ve covered this before. Out of every four people, how many suffer? One. So one person in four suffers.

We’ve talked at length about the cowardly use of qualifiers. This is a three-fer! All you need is one: “Prosecutors say they could wrap in two weeks.”

The DA (district attorney) is nearing the end of his/her case. You can say “prosecution nears end of its case.”

We covered many times, back to in 2021, in our second segment! All felons are convicted. Just say "felon.”

It wasn’t the entire campus that was razed. Just one building on it.

Umm, anyplace and anywhere are the same thing.

Saying something’s happening on Long Island isn’t very specific. It’s a 100-plus-mile island covered by two counties, 13 towns, two cities, 97 villages, 173 hamlets, more than 120 public school districts and more than 900 taxing districts. Good luck finding the rally. But what we really want to point out is something we dealt with in our segment on geographical disqualifiers way back in November 2021. You can say Albany, N.Y., Buffalo, N.Y., or Cooperstown, N.Y. They are cities. Long Island is not.

And we go to the video archives for Segment 78: What’s in a name, Olympus edition. https://youtu.be/C-FnP5aE82Q?si=WlwJk1AhTbBMg8D9

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 can credit you properly. 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!