From simple grammar errors to
unwitting gang symbols to urging people to repeatedly commit violent crimes,
it’s alarming how many mistakes are printed on T-shirts
The errors run the gamut from
silly to downright offensive, but they’re all damaging in some way -- and they
all could have been avoided.
Considering that T-shirts
imprinted with brand logos remain a strong standby for the promotional products
industry, we're taking a look at a few T-shirt mistakes and their fallout.
We're starting out series with
...
Second-place speller
A Boston Red Sox player over the
summer wore a T-shirt that on its back says "If
you can read this, your in second." Well, some would say you’re second
in spelling.
Substituting "your” for "you’re”
probably isn’t going to put anyone out of business, and the only public fallout
appears to be some Twitter ribbing for ballplayer David Ross and the unnamed
T-shirt distributor. But the mistake is damaging nonetheless.
It certainly didn’t help the
T-shirt distributor’s relationship with a major or potentially major client,
whether it’s the Red Sox or Major League Baseball. It also might have forced
the distributor to pay for a batch of corrected shirts, or to return payment
for the bad shirts.
Meanwhile, a quality control
system that slips on proofreading doesn’t build client confidence in core
business functions, even if those functions are very remotely or not at all
related to the error. And the typo itself is just a bad omen: A recent study
found corporations with better grammar usually have better finances.
"This
isn't necessarily a fatal error depending on who’s
responsible for the error, but it is damaging. It's like if the
shortstop booted the ball but only one run scored. It hurts, but you can come
back from it as long as it’s not the bottom of the 9th in the
World Series with the score tied," said Eric Alessi,
president of Essent, which makes business management software for the
promotional products industry. "The real question is: What has the
distributor done to learn from this? What process controls are put in place to prevent it in the
future?"
The
Red Sox are second place in spelling. In the World Series,
second place isn’t good enough.
Ross did his part. His two hits in Game 5 spelled the go-ahead run in a Red Sox win.