This was an ad I recently received in the mail. It looks to me like this is an example of your brain knowing what it is supposed to say and tricking your eyes into seeing it that way. It might be better to have someone else look at it before it goes to press. If the three people mentioned in the ad all looked at it and didn’t see it, they need to slow down and really read it. Avoiding errors takes a little bit of extra time, but it is time well spent.
I received this email recently. Obviously, when the header has multiple errors, it is not from Chase bank. Also obviously, the link in the email is NOT to Chase.com. I know that because I hovered over the link to see where the link went and it was a string of letters and numbers. I guess I should be grateful that the mistakes saved me time in reading the entire email.
A friend sent me a part of this description she saw while looking for a sun visor. I checked and was able to find the full ad and there were so many errors. I assume English is not the ad writer’s first language, but you can see how important clear writing is to understanding what it is they are trying to say. It is the same for your writing. And at least the seller has a good legal team!
A reader sent this to me. It was a sponsored ad on Facebook. I have removed identifying information. It was correct in the headline, but incorrect in the actual body of the ad.
This looks like it was one of those “I know what it is supposed to say” problems–where you skip over words that are misspelled because your brain knows that it is supposed to be even though your eyes could see something different. That can happen when you’ve read it too many times, you are going too fast, or you didn’t proofread it at all because the spell checker didn’t show any mistakes. Slow down and actually read the email, the letter, the pleading, or the ad before it is published or sent off.
My daughter sent this to me from her local grocery store. It just makes me laugh–especially working in the legal field. I’m sure they mean “caramelized” onion relish since that’s what it says in the description of the sandwich, but I’m not sure how it got to be “criminalized” onion relish in the name of the sandwich. Perhaps they were listening to a true crime podcast or streaming episodes of Snapped while they were working and got distracted.
A reader sent this one to me. It took some researching for me to confirm that the warm water would “envelop” your body. Here is the Merriam Webster online dictionary definition of “envelop” and “envelope”
A transitive verb is defined as “a verb that requires a direct object, which is a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase that follows the verb and completes the sentence’s meaning by indicating the person or thing that receives the action of the verb.”
In this example, you are talking about the action the water takes on your body (direct object, which is a noun). Envelop is the correct word here because it will “enclose or enfold completely with or as if with a covering.”
A friend sent this to me and then I saw it over and over again in Facebook ads–always spelled this way. My friend wondered if the editor of the ad had trouble with their own mother and wasn’t sure if it should be “Monster” or “Mother,” so they combined it.
A local newspaper was apparently so intent on getting news out about rumors of a possible NFL trade that they forgot to read the news story. Here is just one paragraph of that story that I found three errors in–and I’m not even a real football fan!
This was on a box in a package I received from something I had ordered on Amazon. I try to have lots of grace with things that aren’t spelled correctly according to American style in another country, but if merchandise from another country is being shipped for sale here in America, I think they need to take the extra time to make sure the instructions make sense and the packaging is correct. The reverse is also true–if an American is selling products in other countries, they should make sure that the instructions and packaging make sense in the country where they are marketing their merchandise.
I saw this sign recently on a TikTok and couldn’t resist. This is a very common error. Just remember that “your” is something belonging to YOU, while “you’re” is a contraction for YOU ARE. Replace the word in question with “you are” and you’ll see that that is the one that works. Unless, of course, you are talking about the nuts that belong to you–which doesn’t make any sense. LOL!
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