Radio ad Usage fail

[dvandom]

"Have you heard of the AHA difference?" "AHA difference? I don't even know what that is, much less heard of it!" - local radio ad for pet lathroscopic spaying, AHA is an acronym for something or other.

This implies that one could be expected to know what it is without having heard of it. Usage fail.

Comments

[recharge138.livejournal.com]

This is screaming for a "Take on Me" joke.

[drelmo.livejournal.com]

That's not grammar. That's meaning. Grammar is structural.

For example, there is some questionable grammar in the sentence; the past participle heard doesn't have the accompanying form of have that it requires; or, more broadly, in this context, much less only licenses a verb phrase with a verb in plain form, e.g. much less make a coherent statement.

Not everything wrong with an utterance is grammatical in nature.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Fixed.

[dhw.livejournal.com]

Probably AAHA (American Animal Hospital Association).

[zqadams.livejournal.com]

I got in trouble during my student teaching for marking off three points for every common error such as "much less" and "could/couldn't care less" in writing. (I had a teacher who firmly believed that if you turned in two pages handwritten or one typed, you got a 70, no matter what was on it...)

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

My approach to content errors in grading is to avoid nickel and diming people, instead rate the overall correctness. So if correctness is 4 points, a reasonable number of little errors is 3/4. To get 2/4 you need either a truly awful number of little errors, or some significant error that shows lack of understanding. And 1/4 if they're barely talking about the right subject.

[zqadams.livejournal.com]

I should elaborate, I think. First, this was on assignments where content and mechanics are graded on separate 100-point scales. Second, no one was going to fail based on making the same mistake over and over again--it was 3 points the first time you made a particular error, and that's it (though I did circle repeats.)