Their’s Something Wrong Here…

If you’re a grammar hound like I am, your alarm bell just went off when you read the title of this post. If your grammar skills are a little rusty, allow me to shed some light on the problem: there’s no such word as “their’s.” The apostrophe isn’t needed because the pronoun “theirs” is already possessive. It’s still wrong, because the correct word in the title should be “there’s,” the contraction “there is.”

Now that we’ve covered that, take a look a this ad:

That is an actual ad that I came across while reading the latest issue of Advertising Age magazine (February 22, 2010 issue, page 35). I spend most of my time writing copy, so when I saw the ad, my heart sank a little. Hey, mistakes happen, that’s why you want to make sure you proof, proof, and proof again. When possible, let others proof your work because sometimes you’re so close to a project, it’s hard to step back and notice certain details.

Most goofs I come across are buried deep in the copy…not in huge letters within the header of an ad. Not sure exactly how something like that could go to print without someone catching it, especially since any decent spell-checker would have caught it. I’m sure some people read right past it and didn’t even notice, but mistakes like these should be learned from so they aren’t repeated in the future.

If you’ve caught similar errors, or if you were responsible for a goof of your own, I’d love to hear about them!

Categories: Copywriting and Grammar

Tags: ad agencies ft. worth, AdAge, advertising blog, creative fort worth, fort worth addy, fort worth advertising, fort worth marketing, fort worth social media strategy, ft. worth copywriting, grammar, Marin, social media fort worth, stephen young advertising dfw, writing