Misplaced apostrophe at Sainsbury’s
While eating last night’s leftovers I noticed this copy on the side of a Sainsbury’s orange-juice carton (click image to view full-size):
All the words are OK, but the apostrophe is misplaced. The heading should say:
What is ‘made from concentrated’ juice?
As it stands, it wrong-foots the reader – you think it might be asking what is made from concentrated juice, rather than explaining what ‘made from concentrated’ juice is.
A good example of how a little punctuation slip can undermine clarity. (Even at a major supermarket…)
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The first line suffers in the same way as well. “Sainsbury’s made ‘from concentrated’ juice..” sounds like they should be telling us why they made it or what they made it from.
So the punctuation creates chaos all over the place. (It’s not an apostrophe, by the way, but a quote mark.) But anyway, the designer would know nothing about anything you or I have mentioned here – that’s not designers’ skills or concern, sadly. So they need some direction from the copywriter, account exec, client gopher, client mid-gopher, or end client, clearly none of which has been forthcoming.
It’s shite, isn’t it?
Yours,
a fellow hack.
I just noticed that on the side of a carton in our kitchen at work. I thought I’d come and Google it. Have you emailed Sainsbury’s about it?
@TRT
No, I’m too tired. And no good would probably come of it anyway.
At least they have the apostrophe in the right place in Sainbury’s (unlike Waterstones, for example).