Illiterate Businesses

It's "obvious"

I love it when posts to this blog get comments like, "Well, it's OBVIOUS that the sign means xxx." The point, my dears, is that nothing is obvious at all when the grammar in signs is ambiguous, particularly for non-native English speakers trying to navigate around our fair lands in search of addresses, locations, food and so on.

IS IT BAD GRAMMAR OR BAD MARKETING?

The Memorex tagline is: "Is it live or is it Memorex?" Apparently they have gotten away with this tagline for more than 30 years.

I can't decide whether this is bad grammar or just bad marketing ... do they SERIOUSLY mean to imply that if you buy Memorex you're choosing death?

I'm just stumped. Perhaps someone smarter than I am can explain it to me...

Here is a link to a PDF brochure with the tagline on it.

I'M NOT REALLY A STICKLER

Whew. I just wanted to get that off my chest. Some of you who email me upon discovering this website are definitely sticklers and that is O.K. by me. But I'm not of a prescriptive bent; I believe language must evolve and that's what I love about English.

I DO take exception to clear-cut ERRORS in the use of English for BUSINESS purposes. Language may be an evolving thing, but spelling, grammar and punctuation errors - especially ones that change or obscure meaning - aren't evolutions. They're mistakes and I would like to obliterate them.

Anyway ... there is a new book out about the evolution of English: "The Fight for English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left" by David Crystal. Readers of this website might be interested in it. Based on the book's description, it looks like it is meant as a counterpoint to Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots & Leaves".

BTW, I learned about this book from one of my favorite websites, the Visual Thesaurus.