Check It Again! (Book One) -
Introduction
About twelve months ago I placed a classified ad in a national magazine for
my website, English Banana.com. A member of the classified team took the
wording I wanted over the phone and agreed to design the ad, using my site's
logo, copied from the website. The wording I asked for was:
Quality photocopiable worksheets for English lessons
www.englishbanana.com
Now available from bookshops
The ad cost almost £100, but I was happy to pay because of the exposure I
believed it would bring to my website. When I bought a copy of the finished
magazine I was initially pleased with the layout of the ad but then horrified by
the spelling mistake. The wording read:
Quality photocopyable worksheets for English lessons
www.englishbanana.com
Now Available from bookshops
Apart from the unnecessary capital letter on 'Available', the misspelled
'photocopyable' jumped out at me from the page. Since I had already paid for
the ad there was nothing I could do. What would you have felt like doing, if
you had paid £100 for the ad? When I phoned up to find out what had
happened the classified ads manager was blasι about the error. He said,
'Does it really make that much of a difference?' I asked for a discount on the
next ad and he started to haggle, saying, 'What's the price of an 'i' or a 'y'?'
What he meant, I suppose, was how could you quantify what a mistake like
that was worth? I explained that my website is aimed at people learning
English and that its reputation and authority as a teaching tool could be
damaged by an ad that showed that we ourselves have problems with
spelling. It is human nature that a reader would probably attribute the mistake
of 'photocopyable' to the company which the ad represents, despite the fault
lying with the ad designer. In the end he gave me a discount of £25 on the next ad, which didn't run, because a few weeks later I had the chance to
cancel it. I have not advertised in that esteemed organ since, which means
that they have lost a trade customer due to a 'y' instead of an 'i'. The
classified ads manager raised a good question, though. Does it really make
that much of a difference?
It seems that almost everyone has read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
But would you have picked up the book let alone bought it if the title on the
cover had been spelled The Da Vinci Cod? Even though the entire contents of
the book may have been mistake-free in terms of spelling and grammar, the
misspelled title on the cover would have put off the majority of people from
buying it. Why? Because it's wrong. Everyone knows that the correct title is
The Da Vinci Code. There is general agreement about the spelling of the word
'Code'.
If the title wasn't spelled right, how could you be sure that the rest of the book
wasn't also full of mistakes? We need to have confidence that what we are
reading is right. We all make mistakes when writing English. Some of them
can be spotted if we take time to check our work. Other mistakes are made
because our spelling skills need improving or there is a lack of understanding
about certain areas of use in grammar; for example when and how to use a
comma.
All of the examples in this section of English Banana.com are adapted from actual examples of English
that I have spotted during the past twelve months. This is English as written
by people who speak and write English as their first language (and, no doubt
in many cases, their only language). Educated people. People who have, in
most cases, enjoyed as many as sixteen years of full-time education. People
who have been to university and graduated with first- and second-class
degrees. People who have achieved high-paying jobs in advertising and
marketing without ever really fully understanding the possessive role of the
apostrophe.
So as not to infringe the copyright of the original authors, I have re-written
each text in my own words, but kept the original mistake as well as the context
in which it was found. So as not to confuse things, there is only one mistake in
each text so that means one mistake per page. Your challenge is to find the
mistake, state which kind of mistake it is (out of the six categories
apostrophes, articles, doesn't make sense, punctuation, singular/plural and
spelling), then write a corrected version. If you can't find a mistake, check the
answer at the foot of the page. If you need help with
any of the terms used, for example 'common noun' or 'adverb',
check out our A-Z of English Grammar Words.
I should perhaps say at this point that I'm not a hopelessly pedantic busybody
who goes around looking for errors and taking pleasure in other people's
mistakes. I'm an English teacher who is interested in helping others to learn
about words and how to use them more successfully. I have found all the texts
from which my examples are adapted during normal reading of newspapers,
magazines, books, leaflets, posters and websites, rather than scanning
material endlessly in search of mistakes. Since we all make mistakes and
don't always use good grammar and spelling in private correspondence, e.g.
emails, letters and text messages, I have excluded this kind of writing from the
book and focused instead on English which has been written for a wider
audience i.e. for the general public to read.
This is English that is looking for an audience, be it an advert, travel book or
leaflet, newspaper article or website. These examples all come from texts that
have been designed to communicate with more than one person. Perhaps this
makes the mistakes more surprising. Many of these mistakes perhaps even
the majority could have been avoided if their authors had checked and rechecked
their work before publishing it or sending it off to be printed. By doing
so they would have improved the level of communication (the primary aim of
any piece of writing to tell the reader something) and avoided making the
organisation they represent look less professional.
The sources for these texts are wide-ranging: they are not simply misprints
culled from humble parish magazines. They reflect what I have been reading
over the past twelve months. I ended up finding so many mistakes that I
thought they would form the basis of a useful workbook for anyone who wants
to improve their written English. Not just students of English, but anyone who
writes with the hope of someone reading their work i.e. anyone who writes
with the purpose of communication. The examples in this book include
professional texts written by employees of major organisations, such as a
national broadcaster, an international bank and a popular film monthly. There
are also examples adapted from texts produced by smaller organisations,
such as a large further education college, a regional tourism marketing group
and a specialist publishing company. Amateur texts, written by people who
don't write for a living, are represented by material adapted from the likes of a
local folk club's 'What's On?' flyer, a local carnival brochure and a large
cathedral's weekly newsletter.
I hope that this new book will help you as you aim to make your written
English:
a) clearer (and therefore more valuable to both you and your reader)
b) more impressive (making you or your company look more professional)
When you go to a supermarket you will usually see enormous signs outside
the store, made from huge perspex letters several feet high. Often they light
up at night and you can see them from far and wide. You can be certain that
these words will be spelled correctly for a reason. What about your English?
Check it again! Then, if in doubt, check it again.
Matt Purland, June 2006
Click here to download this page as a free .PDF worksheet
Disclaimer:
Although the texts in this section of English Banana.com have been adapted from real published material,
all names of people, products and organisations mentioned are
fictional. Any similarity to real people, products and organisations is entirely
coincidental.
