Sunday 5 September 2010

Railing against bad spelling

We’ve already got extra points for doing Leaving Cert exams through Gaelic, and now our wise rulers are talking about bonus points for maths. Maybe they should also consider bonus points for English?


The picture (left) shows an advert spotted on the train earlier today, presumably dreamt up by some marketing whiz – at considerable cost – in an advertising agency. There are a total of 11 words in the ad, yet they’ve managed to spell one of them incorrectly: “Landsdowne” instead of “Lansdowne”.  

Now anyone can make a mistake, but you have to wonder how many pairs of orthographically-challenged red braces that one slipped past?

I hope Irish Rail got a discount for them. Or did they even notice?


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9 comments:

pony'boy said...

Now wheres that Panu gone to GM?, I love a good laff on a monday morning but I wood like to have a word to him/her about langwidge's and e'specially vernacular's versus' lingua franca's and how minisculistically they're impact be's on the over'awl state of affair's in our blessed country but a's a matter of far more urgency Id like to pas's on the name of a good anger management specialising psychiatrist cos' Panu you sure is one boiled up little dud'e. Other than that - lot's of love from Ponyboys world. just as a by the by Panu - when youre in India doing PIE research do country people ever ask you "water" you on about?

The Gombeen Man said...

Must be the spam filter, PB. Think it picks up on the "spamming / trolling / nutters" aspect. Especially nutters.

Anonymous said...

MR GM wondering if i could post a missing person notice on your award winning blog please and thanks, ALBERT STERLING AHERN last seen near fagans pub wearing a motorcycle helmet under his anorack on july 12th ALBERT IS 6.6 FEET TALL is a native of dublins norsoide speacks with avery refined norsoide accent under stress he goes gurrier very quickly, he may be in the area of lisdoonvarna as he is an un refomed romantic this is traditional mating season for ff and gaa types ,lisdoon is also near the cliffs of moher where the oirish economy is expected to arive any day now he may make a futile attempt to stop it going over and seriuosly risk his life for oirland coz thats just the kind of guy he is , any sighting must be reported to the garda between the hrs of 9am and 3pm only BH

The Gombeen Man said...

We'll keep an eye out for him Mr BH. In these troubled times Ireland cannot do without a patriotic genius such as this man.

Anonymous said...

Ah! The English Language being defiled, and in the context of that most West-British of institutions - priceless... ;)

The Gombeen Man said...

And there's me thinking it was just a bad mistake/oversight by the ad agency and Irish Rail management, rather than revenge for the 800 years. ;-)

Is that the same "West-Brit" game the Brazilians, Argentina, Belarus, North Korea and the rest of the world plays then? It's not just the IRFU at Landsdowne - I mean Lansdowne - now, you know.

Anonymous said...

What about correcting your own misspellings, such as "emmigration" for "emigration"?

Being an obscure place name, Lan/d/sdowne is not found in every speller's database, but even the browser knows that "emigration" should be written with one m. In the age of embedded software correcting misspellings, you really have no excuse to spell "emigration" as "emmigration", and you are even less in a position to grumble about anybody else's bad spelling.

And oh yes, I know you little piece of something unnameable won't have the cojones to publish this.

And you know well who I am.

The Gombeen Man said...

If you read my post I clearly said "anyone can make a mistake". If I type directly into Blogger quite often I don't bother with the spell checker. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, though, and making Gombeen Nation even better.

My surprise is that a (far from obscure) placename, spelt incorrectly, got past an ad agency and the management of a semi-state body.

Keep off the voddy these dark evenings, mate.

Ella said...

Anonymous @12h09, as you don't bother your arse to identify yourself. I don't know who you are but, you appear to be an asshole. As GM, said anybody and I mean anybody can make a mistake. GM, blogs and posts his often amusing observations on life in the emerald isle. I'm sure he doesn't have a team of copywriters, proof readers, typesetters, advertising executives etc. at his disposal and CIE probably do (I'm afraid I don't know how to spell the Irish name they go by), it's fair of GM to point out the mistake, it does beggar belief really that posters with an incorrect spelling are used. As for yourself, well...I'd say if you are not happy with GM's blog, the best thing really is not to read it.