violent attack of pedantry
Apr. 30th, 2008 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronSomeone posted this spoof medicine ad on one of the health communities I read: http://www.panexa.com/
I must be sad, because it is ruined for me by the egregious spelling mistakes. I see ocelots, nicotinic acid, cyclosporin, acetaminophen and diarrh(o)ea all spelled wrongly before I even start nitpicking on purpose. I mean, acetaminophen. it's a phenol with an acetyl group and an amide group. Easy!
Yes, I know not everyone can spell or type. I'm totally happy with dyslexic people using phonetic spellings on their own parts of the internet, and with getting emails written in "bob encoding". (Bob can spell perfectly well, but his typing is APPALLING.) But I do expect that if you are a person who can't spell and you put together something that is designed to look "professional" (either because you're promoting or selling something, or because you're making a spoof of a real advert like this one), you should get a friend who can spell to proofread it for you. No drug company would ever issue a press release with this many mistakes in, so seeing them immediately jolts me out of the suspension of disbelief that I was using to enjoy the ad.
Now, here is a good spoof drug ad: Are you a miserable ovoid creature? If direct link doesn't work, go to http://www.astonishedhead.com/ and click on the link at the side.
I am also highly sceptical of Wikipedia's claim that the systematic (IUPAC) name for acetaminophen / paracetamol is N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide. I'm pretty sure it should be N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethanamide.
I must be sad, because it is ruined for me by the egregious spelling mistakes. I see ocelots, nicotinic acid, cyclosporin, acetaminophen and diarrh(o)ea all spelled wrongly before I even start nitpicking on purpose. I mean, acetaminophen. it's a phenol with an acetyl group and an amide group. Easy!
Yes, I know not everyone can spell or type. I'm totally happy with dyslexic people using phonetic spellings on their own parts of the internet, and with getting emails written in "bob encoding". (Bob can spell perfectly well, but his typing is APPALLING.) But I do expect that if you are a person who can't spell and you put together something that is designed to look "professional" (either because you're promoting or selling something, or because you're making a spoof of a real advert like this one), you should get a friend who can spell to proofread it for you. No drug company would ever issue a press release with this many mistakes in, so seeing them immediately jolts me out of the suspension of disbelief that I was using to enjoy the ad.
Now, here is a good spoof drug ad: Are you a miserable ovoid creature? If direct link doesn't work, go to http://www.astonishedhead.com/ and click on the link at the side.
I am also highly sceptical of Wikipedia's claim that the systematic (IUPAC) name for acetaminophen / paracetamol is N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide. I'm pretty sure it should be N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)ethanamide.
