GlobMe.com, learn English!
Jun 30th, 2008 by JoeC
I can usually restrain myself from kvetching about bad English. I will admit it’s a thing with me. I see red when people make plurals with apostrophes. I wince when my friends online insist on using your when you’re is called for, their when they’re is needed or write then when they mean than.
Even though many of these transgressions are in hastily written emails or IMs, many appear in blogs, where you’d think people would care more about putting their best foot forward because they’re expressing their personal point of view for all to read. Even then I hold my tongue.
But today, I saw a blatant faux pas that just pushed me over the edge. I cannot remain silent any longer. This is a company’s web site. This is their product, their pride and joy. There’s only one and everyone from the CEO to the janitor has probably seen it. And here it is in screaming blue large font:
Here we have a mismatched noun and verb. It should read, “Finding events that are close to you”, or alternatively the contraction, “Finding events that’re close to you.” I prefer the former. Now, I doubt that even these idiots would say, “All my dogs is big”, but they appear to think that using the contracted form of “events that is close to you” is fine.
Alright, I’m prepared to believe that the programmer who coded this page may not have been a native English speaker, but God in Heaven Above, is everyone in the QA department, the marketing department and the management also illiterate? Did not even one of their proud Moms (probably closer to my age and schooled in an era where you learned these things in elementary school) not notice this painfully obvious mistake?
Enough is enough. Just on the evidence of either ignorance or a patent disregard for quality, I wouldn’t join or use this site until they clean up their act.
And please, tell me about any mistakes that I’ve made in this post. At least I care enough to want to know.
ps. There are places where incorrect English doesn’t bother me. These are Twitter, IM, SMS and chat. Because brevity and speed are of the essence, ur is perfectly acceptable for both your and you’re, as are a host of other inventive abbreviations, contractions and slang.
Hi Joe,
Maybe it’s a marketing technique… they did get a blog post out of you, after all!
-Hilary
Love the rant Joe – UR the best
I was just talking on Twitter today about this and I said, normally I care, but on Twitter and IM I just can’t stand to proof my typing (what I said is, “it slows a girl down” 
). So I am very happy that you’ve excused both of these. The plural/possessive thing is maddening though, isn’t it?
I couldn’t help but comment on this because I am also one of those types of people that have red alerts going off in my head when coming across inexcusable poor grammar in professional work. The more and more I look at it and read it, the more it just keeps making me think, “How did that slip by?!” My only thoughts on why they went the (incorrect) contracted route is that they’re trying to offer a laid-back or hip feel to their site and sound as if they are TALKING to you. I hear this mistake all the time in spoken language even with grammar Nazis.
On a different note, do you have any follow-up notes to your DMB post on 6/27 (specifically UI implementation for tagging)? That was originally how I got to your blog and it closely relates to my work so it’d be great to hear other people’s ideas! Thanks!
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