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Conference thebay::joyoflex

Title:	The Joy of Lex
Notice:	A Notes File even your grammar could love
Moderator:	THEBAY::SYSTEM

Created:	Fri Feb 28 1986
Last Modified:	Mon Jun 02 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	1192
Total number of notes:	42769

768.0. "Save 40% off..." by MERLAN::JOHNSON () Thu Jan 18 1990 20:23

    Is it correct english to say as they do in radio commercials, "Save
    25% off a new dining room set", etc.  It would seem to me that "save"
    and "off" are somehow redundant, and "off" should be some other
    word, like "from".  Used together they sound wrong to me.  Am I
    right?
    
    TJ

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
768.1	evolution?	LESCOM::KALLIS	Efts have feelings, too.	`Thu Jan 18 1990 21:46`	8
	Re .0 (TJ): A little creative speculation here: Suppose the original (many years ago) was "Save 40% of the price of...." This might have been corrupted to "40% off." Steve Kallis, Jr.
768.2	I've also heard...	REVEAL::LEE	Wook... Like 'Book' with a 'W'	`Thu Jan 18 1990 22:28`	7
	Save 25% on a new dining room set. and even... Save 25% off on a new dining room set. Wook
768.3	Spend 60% of...	HPSRAD::ABIDI	It's a wild world	`Fri Jan 19 1990 17:50`	9
	re .0: To give them (the radio commercials) the benefit of doubt, maybe they say: "Save 25% of (not OFF) a new dining set", by which they mean "Save 25% of the price of a new dining set", which seems correct. Whether the word "save" is at all meaningful in most commercials is another story.
768.4	family sized contributor	CHEFS::BUXTON		`Fri Jan 19 1990 18:26`	13
	Interesting this saving 25% business. Buy here and save 25% is much the same as: Buy here. You could pay 33% more elsewhere! Strangely I'd probably go for the 33% dearer elsewhere than the more modest 25% reduction! I suppose it's a sort of equivalent to packaging: Large - Family - Giant which seem to be the new words for Small - Medium - Large. Bucko...
768.5	how do you pronounce "," ?	MELEE::BIELSKI	huh? a new DECade???	`Mon Jan 22 1990 18:11`	4
	Could it be that they are trying to say "Save, 25% off...." but couldn't figure out how to say ",", so just skipped over it?
768.6	Maybe its Danish ?	KAOFS::S_BROOK	Here today and here again tomorrow	`Mon Jan 22 1990 20:25`	3
	> -< how do you pronounce "," ? >- Ask Victor Borge ?
768.7		TKOV51::DIAMOND	This note is illegal tender.	`Wed Jul 04 1990 06:28`	5
	They all sound better than "Save 40% OVER ...", which I've also heard. By the way, some Japanese stores, when they're having a sale, have signs just saying "OFF". Some of them say "BIG OFF". (But the more boring ones write signs in Japanese that sound roughly like "sale".)