Curse Of The Copywriter.

So I was listening to the radio yesterday on my morning drive when I heard something that made my skin crawl. A duo of morning DJs were digging into a call-in concept: Who in your life should rue the day? Okay, sounds like solid fodder for a fun AM discussion. One guy called in to say how Starbucks will rue the day because said caller has to wait in such a long line for his morning latte. Woe is we. Another individual called to give their “rue the day” callout to her boss, a noteworthily nasty woman apparently.

But the thing that really chapped my ass about the whole thing is that nobody, including the DJs themselves, cared to check on the actual wording of the phrase “rue the day,” and instead kept said “rule the day.” Rule the day? RULE the day?! Let’s just break this one down for a second: Why would a saying that’s inherently negative be using the terminology “rule the day”? If I wanted my jerk boss to suffer, I certainly wouldn’t want them to rule my day. Or much less even be included in my day. It was a classic idiom mixup and it seriously made me want to pull my hair out.

But I guess that’s just one of the occupational hazards of being a copywriter/editor. You hear and see things other people probably don’t even notice, and those particular things drive you completely insane. I realized my reaction to the whole thing was pretty bad when I became irritated enough to change the channel and instead listen to Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger” for the eight millionth time. And apparently now it’s become bad enough for me to write a blog about. But to be fair, I hadn’t posted in a couple of weeks and I needed something to write about. So I guess that’s that. The ultimate lesson: Proofread your shit or at least make sure you’re not making some glaring error over and over for a 30-minute segment on air. Either that, or don’t become a copywriter.