Woop, woop! It's da sound of da police...

The punctuation police that is. Snazzy.

We're considering running a regular feature on here where we will spotlight some truly crud punctuation and grammar; whether peddled by PRs, journos or anyone for that matter.

To kick off we'd like to draw your attention to a series of abhorrent faux pas from Freshwater UK.

Back in January, Freshwater sent out a briefing paper authored by a 22 year old English student, which was supposed to give readers an insight into the ground-breaking Obama campaign.

One person that received this paper; which to be fair is a damn fine-looking piece of work; has been in touch and highlighted several errors that would cause any pedant to twitch with rage*.

Exhibit A

On page 7 of this report we learn that the text messaging service used by the Obama campaign, only managed to gather the contact details of one supporter! Lousy or what?

Don't believe us? Check out the scanned page on the left: "This organised a supporter's contact list..."

Well I hope they at least got his or her work and home contact details; you know, to cover all bases.

Never underestimate the power of the apostrophe.

Exhibit B

Now, this next mistake has been corrected in the report hosted on Freshwater's website; still, it is there for all to see in the printed version.

The fact that this outrageous mess-up was missed by those that proofread the copy is inexcusable to begin with; but that its ostentatious dim-wittedness was then highlighted in a pull-quote beggars belief.

'Costed' is one of those words that makes the user sound illiterate even when used correctly. In this case the tense is all wrong (i.e. costed being the future tense of cost); but the fact that a communications company would parade this abomination in a call-out is, frankly, depressing.

Exhibit C

In a final blow to anyone that reveres the English language, Freshwater encourage readers that have been suitably impressed by the briefing paper to 'Inquire' for further information.

Of course, the word they were looking for was 'enquire'; meaning to ask; not 'inquire' which suggests the reader should make a formal investigation.

On second thought, considering the mistakes that have peppered the report, perhaps an inquiry would be more apt.

Now, it is wholly unfair to pin the blame on the author. Aside from the errors we have listed above, the document was very insightful and informative, and the content was well constructed and easy to read.

The real fault must lie with all those that proofed the copy before it went to print. Shame on you.

Want to join in? You can be one of our 'Special Constables' too. If you spot any misplaced apostrophes or grammatical garbage that make you break out in a cold sweat - get in touch! Email ohwhatsoccuring@gmail.com and we'll expose the ne’er-do-wells.

*Most 'normos' wouldn't give a fuck of course, but why should the rest of us stand idly by as basic intelligence takes a beating?