A recent road trip to Arkansas to see the grandkids produced its usual bumper crop of grocer's apostrophes, misspellings and funky usage.
But one that especially struck me was at a McDonald's in Olive Branch, Miss.. On both the door and the large sign out front, the signs loudly proclaimed:
We accept competitor's coupons
Uh, can we get a bit more specific there, Mickey D's? What competitor would it be - the Burger King next door? The Zaxby's across the street? The Wendy's down the road?What the restaurant more likely meant to say was that it accepted competitors' coupons.
Then I got back here and while waiting at the DMV today was watching the ads roll by on the DMV TV network (who knew - you can't get away from it anywhere). One helpfully noted that a local body shop was "besides" a local auto dealer.
Now, you might want to go to the body shop instead of the auto dealer for your repair, but I suspect the shop wanted to say it was beside that auto dealer.
Beside = next to
Besides = in addition to or apart from
Sigh. And a pox on the next business person who, when I say I teach in a journalism school, starts going on about how "kids" can't spell, etc., these days. (Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera handy for either one.)
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