For Shame!

Why do I take such perverse delight in simple grammar and spelling mistakes on the part of people who really should know better? Must be the curmudgeon in me. Though to tell the truth, I think my main motive is to help you, dear reader, to  not make those same mistakes.

For something to be shameful, it has to be something bad when you had come to expect something good. So let’s start with the good part:

I recently read a book (and I highly recommend it), The Goal by Eli Goldratt. It’s a book about business practice, written in the form of a novel, and it’s quite readable. I actually had a lump in my throat when he solved some of his problems. The book was written more than 20 years ago, and its principle is still relevant. Click my Amazon link over there on the right, buy a used copy, and give it a read. Or visit bookfinder.com and find a cheaper copy, maybe.

So here’s the bad thing. The back cover of another book by this same guy (It’s Not Luck) contains ads for more books in the series. One of the ads puts the wrong word in the title of one of the books! See if you see the mistake:

The Theory of Constraints and it’s Implications for Management Accounting

I know marketing people are reputed to be goofy, but really! “It’s” when they mean “its”? Harrumpf! This is grade school stuff, guys. The title is spelled correctly in the illustration of the book’s cover, too. By the way—I copied the misspelled title into Google to find a picture of the cover, and Google asked if I meant the title with the correct spelling. Even Google’s algorithms know the right way to do it.

Please! Don’t you do that, dear reader. Remember: his, hers, its, my, your, their. No apostrophe for personal possessive adjectives.