As many of you loyal readers know,* I’m an editor in my day job. So it should come as no surprise that I see, and wince at, many instances of poor writing in everyday life. I don’t comment on them in this blog, because I don’t consider them that important. Typos are common, but hardly a source of frustration to me. I employ too many proofreaders to think that even carefully proofread material will ever be truly error free.
Native speakers of English usually understand what is meant when someone uses an apostrophe to indicate a plural, instead of just adding an s, and they hardly bat an eye when faced with even more egregious problems. For example, an email I’ve received a couple of times over the space of several years shows how easy it is to understand words with all the consonants removed (ths sntnc snt vry hrd t ndrstnd fr xmpl), while others have shown that with most letters transposed, the meaning still is decipherable (nac oyu nudrestnad iths esntence?).
But junk mail still gets me. And not just any junk mail, which I usually throw away or shred without bothering to read. What gets me is the junk mail that comes from those organizations that I support and respect. First of all, I’d rather they save their postage and thank me in an email, but that’s immaterial here. No, what gets me is when these organizations write things that make me wince.
For example, our local public radio station (I won’t name names, but it’s based in Miami) recently thanked us for our modest annual contribution. I won’t reproduce the whole letter, but I thought one sentence particularly noteworthy:
If you chose a Thank You gift with your membership, please allow a maximum of 6 – 10 weeks for delivery.
Once again, our special thanks. W[remaining letters suppressed] considers your commitment to Public Broadcasting…
Priceless!
Priceless, indeed, even though the gift had an explicit price: the exact dollar amount of our contribution! But that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s a nice gesture, basically saying that no matter what level of gift you’re able to send to public broadcasting, they appreciate it.
No, what gets me is the idea of allowing a maximum delivery time that has both a minimum and a maximum specified! A range of time (6 – 10 weeks) automatically implies a minimum (6 weeks) and a maximum (10 weeks). If we were to allow a maximum of 6 – 10 weeks, what should the minimum be? One week? Four?
And does the 6-week maximum apply to the really cool gifts, while the 10-week maximum is fine for, say, the mug with the call letters of the station on it? Or can you choose which maximum you prefer depending on your personality type? I, for example, would probably simply forget that I’d chosen a thank-you gift (that’s the way I’d have styled the construction, by the way, instead of as Thank You gift, which is much harder for me to parse), and then been pleasantly surprised when, in 6 – 10 weeks, something appeared on my doorstep.
There’s really no good way to interpret this request for patience other than as a plea to be patient. And for more than just your Thank You gift! To be sure, public radio prides itself on its intelligence, not its proofreading. But when a native speaker of the language simply can’t parse a letter from them, something’s wrong!
*I have absolute confidence that all my readers know this, because there can’t be more than one or two, and I know who you are!