I know that, technically, defacing billboards is illegal, but I have to admire culture jammers: those brave souls who climb up high ladders to get at ads for major companies and turn them into a critique of what’s wrong with society.
This sort of thing appeals to the anti-big-business streak in me.
But something that irks me even more than big-company billboards is real estate agents’ billboards with grammar errors.
It’s almost tiresomely predictable that every time you see one, there will be an it’s where there should be an its, a complements where there should be a compliments, or a comprises of where the preposition just shouldn’t be there. And dangling modifiers…don’t get me started!
There’s one such billboard outside a real estate agent in the local village, a few doors away from my house. You can see it at the top of this post.
If you can’t see the grammatical error, you probably won’t want to bother reading this any further.
But for those who are interested, look a little closer, and you see this:
Yes, I was delighted today to see that someone had culture-jammed the billboard. That’ll learn ’em.
Or maybe not. Bet it’s still there, just the same, next time I walk by. And I bet the next board that goes up has the same old errors. I have three words for you, real estate agent billboard writers: get an editor!
The Crayon Files 
Oh, I see this sort of thing all the time, Caron! And it is annoying – it really is. Not saying I’m perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But a) I edit before I put anything ‘out there;’ and b) those mistakes (like ‘it’s’ are really basic and easy to fix. Grrr! Good on the person who calls companies out for that sloppiness.
I know! Everywhere I look, professional companies, including newspapers, make those basic mistakes all the time. I can forgive bloggers and others who work independently, because we generally don’t have editors, and it’s very hard to edit your own work (though we do try).