The years of UCal budget cuts are working! ("sign-up")

[Brian Hitchcock]

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Lynne Hunter        lynne.hunter at NAVY.MIL  said:

.What I'm wondering, though, is how you're able to identify the
malefactors as _native_ Southern Californians, inasmuch as we have so many
people from out of state and you've evidently witnessed some of the
infractions in impersonal situations (e.g., signs on service trucks)..

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   Good point, Ms. Hunter.  I cannot tell specifically where this type of
error comes from, but I do know that the Los Angeles area has a very high
rate of adult functional illiteracy. As for whether this particular usage
error is any worse here than anywhere else, I can personally attest that
it's much better in Seattle, or at least it used to be; else I would not
have noticed such a stark difference when I moved to Southern California
(but I haven't been back to Seattle, and maybe that aspect has
deteriorated in my absence.)

You mention Macy's  advertising. I have observed that many people in
advertising departments (and not just in SoCal) are woefully ignorant of
proper English usage and syntax, often completely unaware of their
failings in this area, and often reluctant to accept, let alone ask for,
editing assistance.  It may be related to the self-selection phenomenon; I
find that many sales-oriented people tend to be very persuasive talkers
but not quite so adept with the written word.  Or maybe it's because they
consider themselves 'creative' types, and this extends to creativity, or
artistic license (I would call it mangling) with regard to word usage and
hyphenation.  I theorize that this is one reason why successful
advertising executives tend to have Executive Assistants (we used to call
them secretaries) -- to handle their written correspondence and catch
their most egregious gaffes before they are thrust out into the world.  I
also theorize that the worst such errors in the written word come from
businesspeople who have risen to a sufficiently high position in the
organization that their underlings DARE NOT CORRECT their atrocious
usage/punctuation.



A germane and humorous example: Men's work shoes described as featuring
~Lace up front~. This did not appeal to me, as it seemed awfully
effeminate.



And speaking of service trucks:  this morning I saw a window-cleaning van
with the phrase ~High Steam Power Cleaning~ emblazoned across its back
doors.  Perhaps they specialize in tall buildings? More likely their steam
is under high pressure; i.e. ~High-Pressure Steam Cleaning~  (Yes, I
realize this is not relevant linguistically to the original topic, but
it's another typical example of garbled syntax and lack of hyphenation in
public advertising.)



BWH             Torrance, CA

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