The makers of Sudafed cold medicine do a pretty decent job, normally. In fact, I’m doped up on their product at this very moment in a desperate attempt to get over the crud I caught this week and to get my voice back.
However, there was a little problem this week with this particular product.
The manufacturer — a company called McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson — has recalled nine lots of this product — reportedly, more than 660,000 individual packages — all because of this:
Yep. That’s a simple typo that resulted in a double-negative.
Now, most users might apply some common sense here. But all that tiny text is printed on the box for legal liability issues. So a major goof like this just won’t do.
Looks like Johnson & Johnson could have used the services of a copy editor.
Thanks to Towson State (Md.) public relations professor Les Potter for blogging this Friday and to the University of Georgia’s Karen Russell for tweeting it.
You know who else needs copy editors? Local TV news operations. And other local TV news operations. And Baseball jersey manufacturers. And Kansas State University. And the New York Jets, the Minnesota Vikings and the St. Louis Cardinals. And college athletic department ticket offices. And the Virginia general assembly. And college alumni magazines. And pharmacies. And Borders bookstore. And Tea Party candidates. And city and county Boards of Elections. And South African traffic cops. And Google News’ ‘bots. And billboard companies. And sign painters. And rubber stamp designers. And restaurants, breakfast joints and cake decorators. And South Africa’s New Age newspaper. And the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times (Hey! A repeat offender!), the Virginian-Pilot, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinoisian, CNN and Time magazine. And newspapers in the U.K. And drive-in movie theater managers. And Home Depot and manufacturers of “hoodies.†And T-shirt designers. And road paving contractors.
