The latest finding from our shallow research on the current state of English language use and spelling in common locations.

This time from an iPhone app for South African clothing and accessories store: Superbalist.

For each brand, they list the properties of that brand and offer an overview of the product lines Usually this would be drawn from the brand’s own PR materials and manuals. At least you would think that is the case. They certainly make use of the logo thereby giving the impression that it’s official representation.

Take a look at the description found in the image. In this case, we do not have a spelling error but rather a grammatical error. On a supposedly copywriter-approved, proof-read official piece of brand communication? Seriously?

“…a both…” NO. just “both” will suffice. Some will argue that (a?) both could be technically correct, I would respectfully submit the one is far more practically correct and easily read. Additionally, I believe “a” would refer to a single item in the sentence whereas there are two being compared and therefore the correct way to read this is “…both a…” comparing one with another, which in itself then needs to be modified to “an” because it is followed by a vowel. (basically a redundant use of the article, in English language terms)

Let’s compare this error with the official story on Armani Exchange:

Ok, so there isn’t one. The armaniexchange.com website is very clean, very intuitive but devoid of the usual menus like about, home etc…

Wikipedia’s entry on this Wikipedia article isn’t much more useful.

Anyway, for those of you who missed it. There is another error of either grammar or spelling depending on how you see it.

“…the Exchange line remains a both accessible and affordable way to have the coldest wrist in the club.” – surely they meant coolest? These are both superlative adjectives but one is commonly recognised as defining temperature. The other refers to style of dress.

learn to Speak Proper – ok?