A bit of a beauty spotted in a shop today.

CUSTOMER NOTCE

These items have past there sell bye date.
They are still high quality products and the sale date has had a one year extention.

Not only are there many other problems here, but the "high-quality" and "one-year" as adjectives are missing hyphens (as Chris Strolin mentioned several days ago, citing another example, "age-old"). I grind my teeth when I see (most often in the UK) genitive apostrophes used where they're not required (the Americans often leave them out where they ARE required). I'm surprised they didn't spell "products" PRODUCT'S!

Strangely it looked professionally printed on a high-quality (sic) laminated notice in multiple colours and graphics.

What makes you think that printers can spell?

The 'there' wasn't a misspelling; it was a grammatical error.

Doesn't the quality of the message make one wonder if, indeed, there was an extension on the sale date? I wouldn't trust them a bit!

I guess this is an example of "is the glass half full or half empty?" because, since "their" and "there" are homonyms, it could be a misspelling since the writer knew what was required and just misspelled it - OR didn't know what was required and used the wrong form. Who knows what goes on in the minds of those who stand too near the board?

Quote "...The 'there' wasn't a misspelling; it was a grammatical error..."

A moot point. It could be a misspelling of "their" or a grammatical error of incorrect word use. It depends on your point of view. The same could be said of "bye"

However, "extention" is certainly a spelling error.

Exactly; that was my point. We agree.

And, I would respectfully disagree. "Bye" and "extention," I agree are spelling errors, though "bye" could be a moot point (aren't you proud of me, arnie, for using "moot" correctly? )

While of course I don't have any evidence, based on the public's often misunderstanding of the use of "their/there," I say it is safe to conclude that it is a grammar error.

Now, to my point that I wouldn't trust the sale date extension because of the quality of the message, I read a similar one this morning. There is a lot of debate here whether WalMart stores are good, or not, for communities. The pros say that they create jobs, thereby giving people the chance to become educated and productive to society. The cons say that their wages are so low, without medical insurance, that people can't live on the wages. Yet, other businesses that pay more are put out of business because WalMart can pay less. There recently was an attempt to open a WalMart in L.A., but the attempt was thwarted by the community. Now, we are having the same dispute in Chicago: Should the City Council support the coming of another WalMart store? Here was a quote by Alton Murphy, described as a WalMart executive, on the front page of the Chicago Tribune today; he oversees Chicago area's WalMart stores. He is, in other words, a WalMart "bigwig." Here is what he said to a large crowd at a rally:

"Don't you let nobody dictate what goes on in your neighborhood."

I wonder if he means that they should let people dictate to them!

Somehow that doesn't support WalMart's claim that working for them will help people become more educated!

Quote "...And, I would respectfully disagree..."

It's one of the always surprising things about communication - that people even those as erudite as us :-) - still misunderstand each other.

So far as I can see, we actually agree 100%! "Extention" is a spelling error; "bye" and "there" could be either spelling or grammatical errors - the point is debatable and we can draw our own conclusions from the scarce evidence we have.

And I've just noticed :-) a fourth error!

CUSTOMER NOTCE (sic)

quote:

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Originally posted by BobHale:
Strangely it looked professionally printed on a high-quality (sic) laminated notice in multiple colours and graphics.

---

Are we going to argue about hyphens here?

Example #1: "High-quality," one word used as a single adjective, would take the hyphen so no "(sic)" is necessary.

Example #2: "High quality," with both words used as adjectives and with the first modifying or describing the second, would also be correct and, in this form, would not need the hyphen.

The choice between #1 and #2 is largely a matter of style. I prefer #1 only because, as I'm fond of telling my daughters, hyphens are our friends. (I say the same thing about snakes and spiders but they generally don't buy that either.)

Example #3: On the other hand, "The paper was of high quality" ends with the adjective "high" describing the noun "quality" and, of course, any hyphen use here would be incorrect.

I was intending the (sic) to be ironic. That's what you get for trying to be clever I suppose.

Incidenatlly why has no-one commented on "past" ? Surely you can't ALL have failed to notice that it should be "passed".

OK, I'll fess up. I overlooked it but, in my own defense, when I saw this thread for the first time there were already about a dozen posts to it and so I assumed that all the errors had been covered.

But not so fast, there! While we're talking hyphens, you asked why "no-one commented on..."? "No-one"? Is this a Britishism? It strikes me as being slightly Agatha Christy-ish meaning not just British but possibly outdated as well as in her frequent use of the word "to-morrow." Dictionary.com chokes on it.

I would go with "no one" or "nobody" since even though hyphens are our friends one doesn't want one's friends around all the time.


And, as a final sidenote, sometimes the English language simply fails us. I had originaly used the term "Agatha Christian" above intending for the second word to be pronounced "CRIS-tee-un" meaning "in an manner approximating the writing of Agatha Christie." The problem with this coinage was that it sounded great to my ear but to the eye it was, of course, "Christian" as in "Onward Two-Syllabled Soldiers."

And, as a sidenote to the sidenote, I am almost ashamed to admit that I had to look up "soldier" to confirm that I had spelled it correctly. That word has always looked odd to me, as if maybe it's an adjective meaning "more soldy than something else."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chris J. Strolin,

"No-one" is perfectly standard British usage.

Well done then. I wasn't saying that it was incorrect, only that to an American it suggests that you're saying the word "noone" with an exaggerated "o" sound.

I was wa-a-a-ay off and stand corrected.