Nivea ad "would of"

[UnquietDad]

I hear there is - prepare to shudder - an actual printed, proper Nivea For Men ad on the Tube, and I assume elsewhere, which starts with the words:

"Who would of thought....?"

aaaaaaagh!!

I mean, it's bad enough when your usual clutch of ill-educated twentysomethings get this wrong, but are we seriously expected to believe that at no stage in this poster's production, given all the people whose eyes it must have passed under, did it occur to anyone to say, "er, that's not right" ?

I intend to boycott Nivea products.

Of course, we will get the usual bunch of barmy whingers saying that "language changes" and so on. But it shouldn't change through pure, simple, stupid ignorance.

argh...

Oh, come on, UQD - yes, I play devil's advocate on Pedants' Corner, but then this stuff was my bread and butter for a long time, so piss off with the barmy whingers stuff, ok?

And yes, that's ridiculous, shitty proofreading.

Nope, with you there UQD. That's awful.

maybe it's meant to catch your eye?

Email Marketing Week immediately! Got to maintain standards or give the industry a bad name!

So what's the difference between this, which is, we agree, plain wrong and bad proofreading, and something which is an acceptable "change in usage"? I'm genuinely interested to know where we draw the line. It obviously has to be drawn somewhere.

Ninah - if it does, it's just counter-productive.

(I'm sure Terence Trent D'Arby sings "you should of stayed" on "Sing Your Name" too, heaving heard it earlier... will have to check!)

It caught in my throat ninah, never mind me eye.

I too am boycotting Nivea. And men, for good measure.

at Clattered

I haven't even seen the ad, UQD, merely read your description of it, & I am practically gibbering in the corner at the wrongness of it all! Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Anyway . Have to go to pick up the cherubs from school. I would of read your thread sooner but i been busy.

I don't think there's a "line" per se - there are lots of theories as to why language changes, but the main one is because it becomes more useful - so the broadening of the meaning of "decimate" is probably useful, as the original meaning is too precise to be widely used. Esp. now we're mostly not centurions.

Where mis-use leads to ambiguity, communicative confusion, etc, then these changes tend not to catch on in the wider community.

It also depends on context, and I think that people can be safely bi-dialectal/bi-glossial, so that I'll say "that'll learn ya" when taking the piss out of a friend, but wouldn't dream of using that it more formal contexts, and am using it for effect - the problem arises when people use a more colloquial/localised form in an inappropriate setting - viz. the Nivea ad.

And then the rest of the line is drawn on stylistic grounds - mine is very strongly drawn over management jargon, which I despise, but not at all over split infinitives, which I like.

Honestly - read Jean Aitchison - she's really really interesting on this stuff, and knows way more than I could ever dream of.

ps. I have a suspicion that Keats used "would of". But I never liked him anyway.

by "more useful" I meant to the society it's used within.

Maybe I'm not the devil's advocate. Maybe I'm actually King Cnut?

Here is a line what I have drawn innit.

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[helpful]

Thing is, I don't even put ghastly abominations like "should of" into the more colloquial category like "that'll learn ya" (or other examples of that kind of thing like "as sure as eggs is eggs" and "who'd a thunk it" and "them's the rules/breaks").

"Should of" is just plain wrong. And stupid.

Apparently Caxton thought language change was brought on by the moon...

King Cnut was a bit of a silly cnut if you ask me. (And yes, I know how everyone gets the point of the story about him wrong...)

No, should of is grammatically nonsensical, and not useful for effect either, so I don't like it either. I just don't see it as one of the Four Horsemen of the Linguistic Apocalypse either - some people have always, and will always, be v. poor at understanding and using the grammar of their own language.

It's a more damning indictment of recruitment practices for advertisers. How much do proofreaders get paid?

"Who'd a thunk it" is just nasty, though. Blee.

Umm...UQD, I believe the song was called "sign" your name.

Agree with you about would "of", though. What an abomination.

I have a very clear view on these things - I don't see individual people getting things wrong and being poor at understanding grammar and so on being a sign of impending doom. It was always thus. It's why I can live with a greengrocer's apostrophe on a blackboard, because it's just one person's error and it doesn't affect the quality of his carrot's (sic).

What depresses me is where a whole sequence of people has obviously been involved and clearly nobody has acted as "gatekeeper". A printed advert looks official and "finished". It's like finding such an error in a published book, which would be appalling.

With you there, UQD - someone should have picked it up.

Here is a survey/discussion which may be of interest.

That reminds me of Peter Sellers being asked for a "singed photo".

Taking this request literally, he took great trouble to send the fan a photo of himself which he had carefully scorched with a candle.

It was returned with a polite letter saying "Dear Mr Sellers - please could I have another photo of you as this one is signed all round the edges."

Singe Your Name Across My Heart