Evident mistake

The advertisement below appeared in this morning's issue of the Today newspaper.


Referring to the beautiful and slim creatures in the photograph (who most definitely have relied on the advertised product to achieve their alluring profiles), the caption confidently proclaims, "Our evident. Your assurance." Well, at least the mistake is evident. The advertisement should have said, "Our evidence".

The Today newspaper aspires to be a major English-language daily. Shouldn't it therefore assure that grammatically correct English is used throughout its pages?

In fact, we have a striking irony here. Singaporean newspapers regularly "prettify" so-called quotes from local citizens to transform Singlish into correct English, meaning that the so-called quotes are not quotes at all and should not be placed in quotation marks. By contrast, glaring mistakes like the one in this advertisement are allowed to pass. Something's amiss.