Bob Godiva contributed today's mangle, which had done the rounds in 2007 from the point of view of its unfortunate ambiguity, although no-one seems to have considered its appalling grammar or how that added to the ambiguity problem:
It's an issue that appears to arise with the informal, but sadly ubiquitous, term kids,* as this example from the bet-hedging Walmart rather emphasizes:
The term
children, conversely, can be given a possessive apostrophe easily and accurately, as shown on the
Constructive Playthings website:
Perhaps Kohl's, whose name suggests appreciation of the importance of apostrophes, should have chosen the more formal term in order to avoid inconsistency, a grammatical error and, given the grammatical issues, what turns into a potentially ambiguous statement:‡
Many, many more examples exist…
* The OED finds this term in use in English as early as 1642, and notes that it was 'Originally low slang, but by the 19th c. frequent in familiar speech'. In the early nineteenth century, it was also used 'In low sporting or criminal circles [as a] term of admiration for an expert young thief, pugilist, etc.' In the UK, goat occurs in various metaphors, most of which relate to being foolish or behaving foolishly, which makes the ubiquity of kids even more puzzling.
‡ Let's ignore the syntactical illogicality of the product-type listing beneath 'expect great things'.
Note: since the starting point, Target, is a firm operating in the USA, all of today's examples come from North American sources. This is not to say that firms in the United Kingdom or in other English-speaking places couldn't easily supply examples just as good/bad…
