I received an email earlier this week in which the sender wrote, “Hope you had a nice weekend!” That’s nice of her…except she sent it to me on Thursday. Thursday! I feel a bit like an ass if I ask about someone’s weekend when it’s only Tuesday. I think Wednesday is bordering on ridiculous, but Thursday is undeniably much closer to the next weekend than the previous one. That said, it was only the third most troubling work email I received all week.
Coming in second place is an email from a company trying to pitch their business. I opened the attached PDF and noticed a typo in the first sentence…then another in the same sentence. The second sentence didn’t help matters as it changed from the third-person to the first and then back again. Two sentences later, I was hit with this gem: “…(company name) is one of the largest independently owned agency’s is a member of the trade organizations…” Wow. Hard to say where to begin with that. The incorrect pluralization probably bugs me the most, followed by the lack of “and” right after it. I’m also big on hyphenating compound modifiers like “independently-owned,” but I’ve grown accustomed to not seeing that as often as I’d like. Overall, I was troubled by the way this company put itself out there and felt compelled to alert them to the errors. I think I did it nicely, but even if I came off as a bit of a jerk, I’m ok with that since someone had to point their shoddy marketing copy out. It’s all about quality control, folks. (And just in case you were wondering, the company is indeed a domestic one with native English speakers.)
And this week’s winner comes from an e-newsletter I received. I haven’t worked with the company that sent this to me before, but I somehow got on their mailing list (probably from attending a conference). I gave it a quick look and got excited when I saw a section called “Fun Facts.” Then I read it: “7-11% of the world is Left Handed are you one of those special folks? Left handed is more common in men then women. Folks that can utilize both hands are called ambidextrous. Only one out of hundred people are able to write with both hands. Raise your hand if you like fun facts!” I’m going to do something uncharacteristic and gloss over the horrible grammar in every single sentence. It hurts, but I have bigger fish to fry. Specifically, the definition of “ambidextrous” is not a fun fact. It’s a fact – a common, known, and utterly funless fact. Why not just put that the capital of California is Sacramento or that the square root of four is two? Those are equally as fun in my book. You want a fun fact about left-handedness? Go with the origin of the term “southpaw” and its baseball roots or how Rafael Nadal plays tennis left-handed even though he isn’t a lefty because it can be an advantage on the court. Write something about how the unflattering words “sinister” and “gauche” are related to lefties. But for the love of fact-lovers everywhere, don’t just list a common definition. That’s the opposite of fun for me.
Ok, I’m done ranting for now. Have a great two weekends ago.