Bad Billboard Grammar

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how you doing? This is Andy from Socope, North Carolina. It’s a little community just outside of the town of Siler City.

Okay, all right. But I have a question about a billboard I saw outside of Siler City, actually. It was for a phone company, and it had a picture of a woman’s face with eye black under her eyes, the stuff that football players and baseball players use.

Right, right. And the phrase next to it says, be stronger connected to your son. And I drove past the billboard. I didn’t really think anything about it the first day I saw it, but I see it every time I go into town. And besides the fact that I thought it was kind of a silly advertisement, I was wondering about the correctness of the grammar.

So I called my mom and asked her, and she said that it was grammatically incorrect, that it was used in an adjective to modify a verb, and it should be an adverb. So I called the phone company. I told them I thought their billboard was wrong, and I pretty much got a, oh, yeah, thanks. We’ll get right on that, meaning that they wouldn’t. We’re efforting that.

So I just wanted to know for sure if I was right or wrong with the grammatical correctness of that billboard. So they actually did connect you to your mother. She’s another grammar stickler? She was a teacher a while ago, and so she always pounded grammar into our heads when we were kids.

Martha’s point is their ad worked because you called your mother. I know. I was stronger connected. You’re always stronger. Oh, my goodness. And so the phrase again, Andy, was be stronger connected to your son?

Yes, ma’am. That’s it. Ouch. Yeah, that’s terrible. Ouch. And it was on a billboard where thousands of people would see it every day, right?

Right. My gosh. You know what this reminds me of? Do you remember the old Homer and Jethro routines? Do you remember Homer and Jethro, you guys? This is probably before your time.

I don’t. Okay. You’ve got to look these guys up on YouTube. They’re hilarious. Homer and Jethro, and they used to have a song called the Billboard Song, and it’s a song about how there was a tornado that went through town and it messed up all the billboards, and so then they were talking about what they saw as they drove through town. It’s like, smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, drink Wrigley Spearman beer.

Oh, sure, I’ve heard this. Can a ration dog food keep your wives’ complexion clear? We were saying that’s on the camp when I was younger.

Oh, you did? Okay. Well, isn’t that what that billboard sounded like pretty much? I mean, it’s just insane. That’s terrible. Just if you haven’t caught the whiff of this, everyone, it’s wrong. It should not say be stronger connected to your son. Am I making myself clear? Be more strongly connected to your son or connect to your son.

I was going to say connect to your son. Let’s have a nice, strong verb. Right. That’s not even talking about the offense of having too many words there. It’s a poorly written phrase every way to Sunday. I’d like to think that there was a copywriter who got it right and then somebody who didn’t know what they were doing changed it, you know?

Yeah. It looks like a translation from another language, maybe. Don’t you think? It just looks wrong. Be stronger. You know, was there a hyphen between stronger and connected?

There was nothing. Okay. It’s funny, though, that you said you thought it was a translation from another language. Yeah. Because the next day they called me with an automated survey to ask how satisfied I was with my question that I asked the day prior. And the automation was in Spanish.

Oh, nice. Nice. I used to have a chance to practice Spanish. It wasn’t a bad thing. Huh. But I called with an English grammar question and I got called back to famous.

That’s nice. That’s sweet. Boy, that phone company. You can’t say that they don’t have a sense of humor. No grammar, but at least a sense of humor.

Right. Yeah, so you have connected with us, Andy, and we are completely validating you and your mom. Well, thanks. You are 100% right. You now have our permission to put on all your black clothing and sneak up on that billboard and change it in the middle of the night.

Yeah, send us a photo, okay? And I got 50 bucks towards your bail here. All right. Well done, Andy. Thanks for calling, Andy.

All right, thanks. Take care of yourself. All right, bye-bye. Bye. Of course, Grant, this does remind me of the Apple campaign, Think Different.

Yeah, yeah. It did catch a lot of people’s eyes, right? It did, and there was definitely a strong argument to be made that it didn’t have to be the adverb. There was definitely a strong argument there.

Well, it’s sort of self-referential, right? Think different. Right, to think about different as a thing rather than to think differently. But in this case, A, nobody put any thought into this. At least at Apple you could say a lot of really bright people worked on that and they understood that there were multiple layers of meaning in there and that we would discuss them.

Maybe, yeah. But there’s no thinking here. This is just a mess. I wonder if the sign guys composed this in their truck the moment before they got out the paste and the paper to put it up.

Have you seen something that kind of ticked you off? If somebody didn’t get grammar right in a public place about 20 feet high and 30 feet wide, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or send photos of it in email to words@waywordradio.org.