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Watch your digital signage grammar

In this series, we are going to discuss five more common mistakes people make in writing today – verb-noun number agreement, using the correct pronouns, capitalization and punctuation, and often misused or misunderstood phrases.

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September 3, 2019 by Ellyce Kelly — Communications Consultant/Public Relations Special, Visix, Inc.

This is part one of a two part series looking at common grammar mistakes. Part one will focus on verb-noun agreement and pronoun usage.

In our previous blog, we discussed how making mistakes when creating messages for digital signs can detract from the authority of your content and make your communication efforts seem less trustworthy than you would like.

In this series, we are going to discuss five more common mistakes people make in writing today – verb-noun number agreement, using the correct pronouns, capitalization and punctuation, and often misused or misunderstood phrases. What's listed here are the actual rules, insofar as English has any hard and fast rules, for writing in all contexts.

As you study these rules, you'll also want to consider the specifics of digital signage messaging, which is a unique writing format. You need your text to be as succinct as possible while still conveying all relevant information. Current wisdom on the subject of message length is that 22 characters is the maximum for a single slide. So, for example, you might choose to use an ampersand (&) instead of the word and in a particular message in order to save space. Just make sure that's a conscious choice you make and not an inadvertent mistake.

If it's appropriate and interesting to your audience, you could even take these tips to create a series of fun, informative slides for your digital signs. Gamifying things could engage more people, with a "spot the mistakes" or "which is correct?" series that offers kudos or prizes for correct answers. You could reward the first few people who answer, or the most errors caught in a certain time period. This is a great way to see who's paying attention to your digital signs.

Verb-noun number agreement

The number of the noun (whether it's singular or plural) determines the form of the verb.

Suki has three cats.

The cat chases the mouse.

but

My friends have three cats.

The cats chase mice all day.

There might be more than one noun-verb pair in a sentence, so make sure each corresponding verb agrees with its noun.

An article I read describes how trade wars lead to more serious problems, and it uses the current attitudes both China and the U.S. have to illustrate its point.

Some nouns are plurals, even though they look like they're singular. These are sometimes called trick singular nouns. The words everybody, everyone, nobody, neither, either and each all use a singular verb.

• Everybody has to help out.
• Even though both people have a good track record in sales, neither is suited to the new position.
• Each of the people who applied was a good candidate.

The noun phrase "none of us" uses a singular verb when it means "no one" or "not one."

• None of us is
• Sometimes this is because the noun ends in -s, so it looks like a plural (but isn't).
• Politics is in my blood.
• The company headquarters is in the Garden District.

Sometimes it's a collective noun that refers to more than one individual.

The team is the best in the league. (Note: in the UK, collective nouns for people are often treated as plurals, so "The team are the best in the league.")

Compound nouns separated with the word "and" are treated as plurals.

John and Aki work in the shipping department.

A common mistake occurs when there are words that come between the noun and the verb.

The country with the largest number of self-driving cars is currently the Netherlands.

The majority of workers wants more paid time off. (Yes, this sounds odd, but it is correct – the main noun is "majority", not "workers".)

A singular subject uses a singular verb, even when other nouns are connected to it using "with", "as well as", "in addition to", "except", "together with" and "less than".

His appearance as well as his attitude is less than ideal.

There is/are…

Again, this is a singular/plural issue. While no one would say or write "There is three people" or "There are a cat", it's becoming more and more common to hear or see things like "There's ten people in our group". The problem is that there's is being used as a word in its own right, and not as a contraction for "there is". Simply rephrase it without the contraction, and you will see quite clearly when to use there's and when not to. (No one would think "There is ten people in our group" is correct.)

There's a lot of space in here.

There are a lot of people in here.

Proper pronoun cases

English has almost totally eliminated grammatical cases, except for pronouns. She is in the subject case, while her is in the object case and hers is in the possessive case. English compensates for not having extensive noun cases (like most other Indo-European languages do) by having a fairly fixed word order: SVO (Subject-Verb-Object). Subject pronoun forms usually go before the verb, and object forms usually go after the verb.

• I want to talk with her.
• She wants to talk with me.
• He wants to talk to her and him.
• Will Chen or he be hired?
• She gave it to Jane and me.

In more complex sentences, the same rule applies.

The person who won was she. (Simply re-cast the sentence in a more standard form – She was the person who won – and it becomes clear.)

The trainer gave some great advice to Hector and me. (Just eliminate the other person and it makes sense.)

Only use a reflexive pronoun, e.g. myself, if the subject and the object are the same person. And never use it as the subject of a sentence. (Yes, we're repeating advice from our previous blog, but we see this a lot.)

• I did it myself.
• Who's going to the meeting? Bob and I.
• NOT "The project was completed by Hector and myself". It should be "The project was completed by Hector and me."
• He did it himself.
• The problem will work itself.

In part two, we will look at capitalization and other issues.

About Ellyce Kelly

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