Unpardonable Product: Safeway

We won't even touch the question of whether such an item would be palatable to the taste buds; it's unpalatable to the discriminating mind, and that's enough for us. We beg you, do the world a favor and find another low-guilt ice cream to satisfy your craving.

Introducing: Unpardonable Products

Now that the Christmas shopping gorge has concluded, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce a new category that is particularly product-related. Unpardonable Products are those whose product names involve such outrageous assaults on the English language that they ought never to be purchased by a grammar-loving individual, as a matter of principle if nothing else. Help us send a message to the companies producing these products that such egregious violations of grammatical taste will not be tolerated!

We are grateful to be able to do our part in encouraging responsible consumption.

The AP: Too good to resist!

We are having a hard time keeping ourselves from laughing out loud at this error, which we found in an AP article titled, "Sources: Mitchell Report to name MVPs, All-Stars, won't address amphetamines":

"The Web site cited an unidentifried source close to the trainer."

We confess, we are not exerting ourselves very strenuously to keep from laughing; we are mostly just laughing inappropriately and getting some strange looks from the gentleman refilling the vending machine. We are aware that this error is likely due to the fact that the writer was rushing to break a story about baseball steroid use (snore); nonetheless, um, spell check? Anyone?

The AP earns a Totally Giggleworthy, C for Creative Spelling, an Oops! Is my lazy showing? and the following Drunken Proofreading rating:

**** (four stars) - Yesh, I take thish water bottle everywhere I go. It'sh water. No, you can't have any.

Good Times at The American Interest

We came across the following error in an otherwise excellent piece in The American Interest titled, "On Forgetting the Obvious":

"A non-warrior democracy with a limited appetite for casualties is probably a good thing in terms of putting the breaks on a directionless war strategy."

This homographic hiccup is almost cute, really. Breaks, brakes--tee hee*. We would almost rather consider it as an invitation to The Grammar Wall of Shame - a private challenge between The American Interest and us. Well done, mesdames et messieurs. Challenge accepted and met.

Nevertheless, The American Interest has earned itself an Oops! Is my Lazy Showing? and the following Drunken Proofreading Rating:

*** (three stars) - I needed a shot just to look myself in the mirror this morning.


*It must be stated that in the interest of accuracy, and recognizing that we too can err in these matters, we did some research to make certain that this usage was indeed incorrect. While there are many and varied uses of the word break, we have now satisfied ourselves that this usage is improper, although we must confess that, after reading 122 definitions and uses, the word break no longer looks like a word at all. We invite you to read for yourself.