Editing English ad copy

A real estate ad clarifies its copy.

Mangled English on advertisements and in other public spaces is so common that it possesses a certain charm, and actively pointing out mistakes gets old pretty fast.

Here’s an example that ran in The Beijing News as part of an ad campaign for a new development of northern European-style detached homes near Huairou northeast of the city. The point here isn’t the bad English, but rather the fact that it was corrected so quickly.

The upper version ran on the 12th of July, and really isn’t anything out of the ordinary. Three days later the text was corrected to the version shown at the bottom. The development’s website (removed), unfortunately, still has some strange phrasing in the Flash intro.