Eggblogg

Should businesses care about grammar, spelling or punctuation?

So Tesco has finally bowed to the weight of complaints about its 'ten items or less' checkout signs and will be changing them. Some of us will be very happy about that. Others will be in the 'who cares?' camp.

At university one of my linguistics tutors instilled in me the idea that language change is inevitable. A truly academic approach to the subject does not involve value judgements about what constitutes correct or incorrect language use.

Not only that, but the grounds upon which we criticise English language (mis-)use are often bogus, thought up by prescriptive Victorians trying to make English fit the Latin mold, much like left-handers used to be forced to write with their right hands.

So when people moan about split infinitives, 'might' versus 'could', 'hopefully' versus 'I hope' and so forth, I try to stay out of it, not always successfully. Although the 'its/it's' problem has allegedly improved over the last 30 years, it still slaps me in the face on a daily basis.

What's acceptable in these days is vastly different to even, say, 20 years ago. Copywriter Leif Kendall recently commented on how the formal style of business letters has relaxed and how the written word resembles the spoken more often than not.

So what about spelling? There are some who want the English spelling system abandoned in favour of something where words are written as they sound. With my 'judgemental' hat on I would say that people are less able to spell these days, from the evidence all around us. Apparently, spelling is just more difficult than it used to be!

From a business point of view, there can be no excuse for consistently poor spelling: why was the copy not proof-read? OK, so typos do slip past more than one pair of eyes from time to time. But spelling or punctuation mistakes aren't always typos: they are often just mistakes. And when a business is this sloppy in its own presentation, what kind of service is it likely to deliver?

Personally, although Tesco changing its signs won't make me shop there, I do welcome it. Just a shame they couldn't go the whole hog and change to 'Ten items or fewer'.

Looks like 'fewer' is on its way to that great rubbish dump of unloved words in the sky. Alas!

In the face of adversity

I am a Kenyan living away from home and so have been glued to the news throughout the post election crisis. It’s been such an awful time for us as a nation and the effect on Kenya has been devastating.

The tourism industry has been hit hard, as you can imagine, and if I hadn’t been in contact with family that live in the country it wouldn’t be my first choice of holiday destination either. But the perception of Kenya as a war zone is inaccurate.

I know that The Kenya Tourism Federation (made up mostly of volunteers) has been painstakingly fighting these images and have been rolling out an aggressive public relations campaign but it seems to me the message is not getting across. More needs to be done on educating the world on the reality of the situation, perhaps stepping up media relations and contesting the sensationalist view of the media, but is it all futile? After all gore and pandemonium sells newspapers!

David Beirman gives a good insight on crisis management in the tourism industry and what Kenya should be doing to limit the damage done to the industry. This article inspired me and gave me hope for Kenya’s future.