Fans of Taylor Swift say some of the shirts they’ve purchased feature printed lyrics from one of her songs…but some contain an embarrassing typo!
Taylor Swift fans noticed a typo on some shirts that are part of a line of clothing inspired by her newest single, “ME.”
In this case, some fans went onto Twitter posting photos of the error. The shirts feature printed lyrics from the song, and one of the lines is supposed to read, “You’re the only one of you.”
It’s certainly a nice thought. But the problem was that the apostrophe was in the wrong place. The phrase, as printed on some shirts, reads:
Your’e the only one of you.
“Your’e” instead of you’re.
When spelled correctly, you’re is a contraction of the words you are. In contractions, the apostrophe takes the place of letters that have been deleted. Don’t, for example, is a contraction of do not and y’all, the famous Southern contraction, is short for you all.
There is, of course, no such word as “your’e.”
One of Swift’s fans, who uses the Twitter handle SaavyStardust, was among the first to point out the mistake with a photo:
“I’ve had this shirt for nearly a month and you’re telling me it’s had a typo THIS WHOLE TIME!!” she shouted on the social media platform.
Some fans, however, who rushed to check their Taylor Swift merchandise reported theirs didn’t feature the typo:
In the grand scheme of things, the error certainly isn’t the end of the world. If anything, it’s a curiosity.
Some fans have asked how such a mistake could “get through.” Well, I imagine the graphic design program didn’t catch it. (I’ve never found a spell check option in Photoshop.)
And if the person who typed it up didn’t catch it and whoever was in charge of quality control didn’t, either, then it could easily get through. Sometimes, our eyes do automatically correct typos and it can be easy to overlook them.
Consider this: her most enthusiastic fans had the shirt for a full month before anyone said anything.
The BBC suggests the mistake on the shirt, which is no longer available, will likely make it more valuable to what it refers to as “hyper-completists.”
The biggest surprise for some of us is that Swift’s younger fans even noticed the typo. It’s easy to blame the younger generation for the “death” of good grammar. After all, my generation took the same flak from the one before it.
It’s refreshing, though, to see people taking notice of the error, even if they aren’t likely to part with the shirts in favor of one printed correctly.
