HAS? HAVE? Pick one only, please!

I received a colorful ad brochure magazine in my mailbox this week. It contains many ads for upscale shops in my area. The graphics and the photography are quite attractive, but the feature articles about businesses are riddled (yes, riddled!) with glaring Grammar Glitches. Whoever is writing these pieces is either careless or does not have a good grasp of common writing rules.



I'll share three examples this morning--all from the same short article. The first is a parallel structure issue in this sentence:



Lucy's even has a school spirit department for all the Vestavia Rebel fans and have recently created a Teen Advisory Board.



The writer started the sentence assuming correctly that "Lucy's" is ONE store and used the singular verb HAS. Then, maybe because Lucy's offers "Gifts, Toys and a Whole Lot More," the writer switched to the plural verb HAVE in the second part of the sentence. Hm-mmm. Maybe the writer made this mistake because the word FANS (object of the preposition FOR and NOT the subject for the verb HAVE) was just too close to the verb, and she could not resist.



Whatever the reason, the writer was creating two verb phrases that both refer back to the singular subject LUCY'S. The sentence should read as follows:



Lucy's even has a school spirit department for all the Vestavia Rebel fans and has recently created a Teen Advisory Board.



The same short article contains two more Grammar Glitches. One is a run-on sentence:



When you have the time you will want to go in the store and shop, they have convenient front door parking and specialize in great gifts for every budget.



This is not easy to read because the one comma in the sentence (which should be two sentences) is in the wrong place. The comma should come after the five-word introductory clause WHEN YOU HAVE THE TIME. There should be a period after SHOP. It should read as follows:



When you have the time, you will want to go in the store and shop. They have convenient front door parking and specializde in great gifts for every budget.



The other Grammar Glitch is another comma placement error:



Owner, Tahara Evans is a Vestavia graduate as well as a resident of Vestavia Hills.



The writer needs to make up her comma mind on this one. Either she wants to set off the owner's name with a comma in front of it AND a comma after it OR she should streamline, journalism style, and not set the name off from the OWNER title at all. The sentence should read this way:



Owner Tahara Evans is a Vestavia graduate as well as a resident of Vestavia Hills.



When you put a person's title BEFORE the name, it is not necessary to use the commas. The writer would only have needed commas if she had written it this way:



Tahara Evans, owner of Lucy's, is a Vestavia graduate.

Whoops! As I was proofreading this blog entry, I noticed yet another Grammar Glitch in this same short article. Here it is:

Lucy's reopened in their new location on September of 2009.

Lucy's could reopen ON a specific day in September or IN September. It is not necessary to add the word OF. This sentence should read as follows:

Lucy's reopened in its new location in September 2009.

BONUS POINT: I am sticking with the writer's first usage--that Lucy's is SINGULAR--and changing THEIR to ITS in this sentence!