Hot Under the Collar

I’m writing a longer piece about Hanes Lay Flat Collar T-Shirts for Visual Thesaurus, but I have too much surplus crankiness not to preview my thesis here.

Let’s start with an email promotion starring Michael Jordan that appeared last week in inboxes around the country, including that of my brother Michael, who forwarded it to me:

“Lay Flat Collar Tees”? I am shuddering as I type those words. Why? Because:

1. A hen lays eggs. A collar lies flat. Unless we’re using the past tense: “Yesterday, my collar lay flat. Today, alas, it lies crumpled in the corner.”

2. Compound adjectives take hyphens. If you must (really? must you?), it’s “Lay-Flat Collar.” (In some places on the Hanes website, it even appears as “Layflat Collar.” That noise you hear? It’s my convulsive whimpering.)

3. It’s a T-shirt, and T-shirts by definition don’t have collars! They have necklines. Here, take a look: “T-shirt: A short-sleeved, collarless undershirt” (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition; emphasis added). 

In years gone by, I would not be bleating my complaints in lonely isolation; egregious errors such as these would have brought out a horde of outraged self-appointed grammar enforcers. But standards have sunk so low—yes, I said “have sunk,” not “have sank,” because that’s how I roll—that I’ve been hard pressed to find even a peep of protest. Oh, all right, one peep: in a Hanes commercial that mocks a kindly gentleman who dares to suggest that “lie” is preferable to “lay” in this context.

Here’s the best/worst part:

See the first sentence? “A collar that lies flat.” Yes, apparently some heroic copywriter at Hanes couldn’t bear the shame and found a way to insert the correct language into the guarantee. Give that person a raise!

I mean, really. Even a dog can learn the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs.

Cartoon by Harry Bliss.

Comments

[Colleen_C_C]

I imagine you've already seen this (may even have blogged about it without my having seen it), but in any case, I had to laugh out loud at the leading example: "The North Face" _vs._ "The South Butt." *LOL*

_http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704895204575321230041321508.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_1_