A reader emails
As I know you don't use the underground if you can help it, I feel it my duty to draw your attention to an ad on the tube for Nivea products for men. It starts with the sentence: " Who would of thought.........?""Would of ?"
Does Nivea's Ad agency have no proof readers or no one in their entire marketing department who might have alerted them to this shocking error? Clearly not.
Would you trust their products on your skin if their grammar is so sloppy? I'm changing to Oil of Ulay immediately... :)
Oh Dear! Very embarrassing :)
ReplyDeleteThis is a very common error now - it causes an irrational rage when I see it. My children have been sent to their rooms for making this mistake!
ReplyDeleteIt's Olay these days, do try and keep up Iain
ReplyDeletedont diss the edukashun of todays yoof, you are just stuck up middle clas toff, nobody cares how you spell stuff anymoor or about that gramar fing.
ReplyDeleteYou look more like the KY jelly type Iain....
ReplyDeleteIt was part of a thesis on The English language submitted from Downing Street. Their maths are pretty crappy, too! How many noughts in a trillion?
ReplyDeleteColgate managed a 100ft poster outside London Victoria station a couple of years ago that had the apostrophe in the wrong place.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say it was down before the end of the day!
wv fachion!
Olay is better then Nivea, anyway.
ReplyDeleteTypical ad agency - probably think it's cool to be 'daan wiv thuh kidz-speek'. !
ReplyDeleteThen again, I wouldn't use this product anyway because they choose not to use the correct English spelling of Cream.
And if they insist on the French version, there should be a 'grave' accent over the first 'e'.
Excuse me now whilst I go off and stroke my 'New Oxford Dictionary'.
Bloody Hell!!
ReplyDeleteWhere is my red pen?
Ah. Here it is, at the ready to fix errors like that!
Commenting from work, during my break... in a company where editing is done in the old fashioned way, with red pens, on paper galley proofs!
Great fun!
My number one pet hate just now is vulnerable pronounced as vunerable, i.e. omitting the 'l', as heard so often on the BBC. Aaarrgh!
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for government (pronounced as guverment without the 'n') and Wednesday (pronounced as Wensday without the 'd').
Another pet hate of mine beloved of the BBC (and cabinet ministers) just now is "if you like" - not in its normal usage, but as in that famous Gilligan broadcast, "The main case, if you like, against Iraq" (see here).
While I'm at it, let's not forget the redundant south eastern predilections for "actual", as in "the actual this, the actual that" and "like", as in "I'm going the cinema, like, this evening".
Give me strength.
Whatever happened to education and civilisation?
It is astounding and horrifying how many people make this error. It is I'm afraid far from an oiky kid mistake either. I have clients who far outrank me in success and pay, well everything really, except that they are too STUPID to realise that "would OF" makes no sense at all. GRRRRRRRRRR!
ReplyDeleteSurely you mean 'Oil have Ulay'?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEr, am I the only one who can't really see what the problem is...? It's an ad campaign, not a White Paper, and many people use the phrase in question. The ad's trying to get across a message, not a grammar lesson.
ReplyDeleteSometimes "ye Olde English" isn't exactly catchy
Wotever.
ReplyDeleteas any fule kow the answer is 'education, education, education'
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, our schools are forced to submit the youth of the nation to a month of gay, lesbian and transexual awareness.
ReplyDeleteIt's this government's priorities that makes us admire it so much.
Quiet news day is it, Mr Dale?
ReplyDeleteFinancial Armageddon is upon us, we live in an increasingly totalitarian state, democracy is flying out the window, Parliament is apparently reduced to a mutual appreciation society, and here, on supposedly the most influential political blog in the land, the discussion de jour is the difference between of and have?
Asda in Cardiff had to take down a bi-lingual sign for wine and spirits, they had translated into Welsh and it read "Wines and Spooks"
ReplyDeleteAlso our Local Authority put out its newsletter highlighting Christmouse events.
It's been a long week.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it was deliberately?
ReplyDeleteMost people will read it as "Would have thought it" without realising that is not what is written down.
Like the theory that you can leave out vowels from an English sentence and it is understandable.
Ten years of Labour who love to make every illiterate into a winner.
ReplyDeleteIt's all due to a lack of education - like never having watched THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND. Ta-boom.
ReplyDeleteEarlier in the week Iain wrote:
ReplyDelete"Tom Harris has decided to start a silly little meme about the 25 DVD's Gordon Brown got given by Obama."
DVD's. With an apostrophe for a plural term??
Does Iain Dale's Diary have no proof readers (i.e. Iain) or no one in their entire marketing department (erm... Iain again) who might have alerted Iain to this shocking error? Clearly not.
Would you trust Iain's political analysis if his grammar is so sloppy? I'm changing to Oil of Draper immediately...
Stick this is your palm Olive
ReplyDeleteClearly intended for boyz who do travel by Tube who are bored of proper grammar.
ReplyDeleteFraser Nelson has just blogged a post entitled
ReplyDelete"Why our state-owned banks asking customers about their politicial affiliations?"
Who would have thought it?
... a title which he has now corrected. It might take Nivea a little longer.
ReplyDeleteThe one that's bugging me at the moment is the poster for "Benjamin Button" that's at the end of the South Ken tube station subway - it has various quotes from critics, on of which contains the word "it's" as the possessive form of "it"! AARGH!
ReplyDeleteI would flay the skin off anyone who commited such a gross calumny.
ReplyDeleteBet you that it was done by a US advertising firm. The Sepps have major problems with English. I hate their revision of the word "momentarily". They define it as meaning "in a moment" ("He'll be here momentarily") rather than the correct "for a moment".
ReplyDeleteThen they confuse "then" and "than", as in "She's older then him"
They should of got someone to check that...
ReplyDeleteI remember making that mistake once in prep school. I got boxed around the ear. Ahh those were the days. Teachers were masters and boys were boys.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of traditions, I'm a Johnson's baby oil man, all the way.
wv - impart - how droll!
Iain,
ReplyDeleteIn notifying us of this error, I am sorry to say "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". But I will let you off! (As I hope you will for any inaccuracies here in this comment.)
One may "proofread" and become a "proofreader" - all one word. "Copy-editing", "copy-editor" and "copy-edit" all take a hyphen, for added info. (Double-checked in the OUP, so as not embarrass myself on that one.)
As for "of" instead of "have", this has come across from the US. I'll betcha my bottom dollar on that one. I'll wager another dollar on the ad having been produced across the Atlantic. (Was I wise to pick the dollar there? Not checked the markets today as I've been out.)
Apologies for my pedantry, Iain - I am the same age as you - and a certain Mrs G Roberts drummed English Grammar into us at school and the impact remains to this day. She might even correct me on my use of "one" above, as it is short for "everyone" we were told - and also told, abused by Princess Anne when she used it referring to herself and not "everyone", the naughty girl!
My current pet-hates are mid-Atlantic English - and I can name two big publishers here - where it's all in UK English apart from verbs ending in "-ise", which are "-ize". So while we may still be "harbouring" thoughts, we will read that we are "tenderizing" our chicken breasts or pork chops.
The second is the use of the apostrophe, especially for the possessive of the single noun ending in "s". It's no longer "Giles's truncheon" but "Giles' truncheon". And in the plural, no longer "the Joneses' house" but "the Jones' house". In the case of the former singular, they even say it that way, without the extra syllable, at the BBC.
I know the English language adapts, but there is also something called "standards falling".
Personally, I can give Nivea a miss on this one; it's L'Oreal's troupes of over-paid and digitally-enhanced slebs telling me I'm "worth it" at every opportunity in the TV ads that I take exception to. They seem to think we women are thick.
And the final answer? Go buy aqueous cream. Cheap as chips; non-perfumed for the allergy sufferer; good for moisturiSing and cleansing. Now, if only I can find my YSL Touche Eclat, lost again this week and just when I needed it most...
Crimeficreader said,
ReplyDelete'In notifying us of this error, I am sorry to say "let he who is without sin cast the first stone."'
Let HIM. Accusative. Even though this familiar remark is a paraphrase of John 8:7:
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
I try to keep quiet about grammatical errors, to which we are all entitled; but when pedants make them in their maunderings, I get a bit beaky.
Andrew 12:35: You ask "Whatever happened to education and civilisation?" The answer is a Labour government was elected.
ReplyDeletebuy cheap, buy twice!
ReplyDelete;)
It's because they are literal in the interpretation of "would've" as would of instead of would have.
ReplyDeleteKids don't get taught grammar any more, you know... and they wouldn't know how to spell would've, anyway.
What is the plural of Stadium?
ReplyDeleteWell done.
ReplyDeleteSeeing this made me laugh and take a photo. Poor Nivea!
ReplyDeleteToday on the Northern Line, I noticed a lot of empty ad spaces. Any chance the offending piece may of been pulled?
Great to see so many people respond to this online. Pedants, forward!
I agree the ad could not 'of' gone through all the processes from proposal to printing without someone spotting the boob, so am pretty sure those cool dudes at Nivea were just trying to get down wiv da kids - and yet even my 11-year-old understood it was wrong. People who think such things don't matter probably haven't got children, or if they do perhaps they don't care if their kids can't speke or rite proper.
ReplyDeleteMost people wouldn't find anythink (sic) wrong
ReplyDelete