The Captain's Blog ™

Mrs Consumer forwarded an email to me today from Euroffice, the online office supplies retailer. The missive in question promised “12% Off All Stationary”. She sure knows how to get me riled, that woman.

Euroffice office supplies

This is an OFFICE SUPPLIES retailer that can’t even spell STATIONERY correctly!

They’re not the first business-to-business retailer to make this basic mistake, either. When discount printer Optimalprint UK launched their website, they too promised great deals on custom-printed “stationary”. A quick email saw the error corrected, although I note they still persist with the other error I pointed out: referring to colour with the Americanised version of the word on their UK-specific website.

I hardly even dare raise the subject of spurious apostrophes. The prevailing wisdom amongst copy writers (whether for the web, email or the printed word) seems increasingly to be “if in doubt, use an apostrophe”. Never mind that they might be referring to a simple plural - so often it seems to be the case that people throw a free apostrophe into the mix – just in case one’s required, presumably.

In my opinion, when it comes to marketing, it’s well worth making a little extra effort to make sure that your copy is correct. If you fail to make basic checks, you risk looking daft (at the very least) and potentially even losing (or, as some would have it, “loosing”) the respect of your target audience completely!

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