As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day...

Yesterday, Benny received two coupons in the mail for free bags of Wise potato chips. (I will be saving these for the next BOGO sale somewhere.) He received these coupons because of this:

Wise Consumer Affairs Department

228 Raseley Street

Berwick, PA 18603-4533

To Whom It May Concern:

First, let me state that I am a longtime customer, consumer and fan of Wise snack foods. I have been purchasing your products and enjoying them for as long as I can remember. Your Owl mascot is one of the most welcome and recognizable symbols in the snack food aisle and I continue to look to it as a reassurance of quality and good taste.

That makes the following discovery all the more distressing.

I recently purchased two 8 ounce bags of your Wise Ridgies All Natural Ridged Potato Chips. As I was enjoying some of them with my soup one day, I started to read the back of the bag. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me as I read “No dip? They’re also great right out the bag.” I had to reread it three times to make sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen.

Did I just read the phrase “…right out the bag” ? Yes, I did.

I hope I do not need to point out that this phrasing is grammatically incorrect. The correct phrase would be “They’re also great right out of the bag.” The “of” is definitely needed. “Of” is a preposition, a word that shows the relation between a substantive (a word or group of words functioning as a noun) and a verb, an adjective, or another substantive. In this sentence “of” serves as a bridge and its omission creates an awkward and erroneous phrasing. This phrasing is no more correct than saying “My car ran out gas.” or “I put the dog out the house.”

An alternate tack would be to say “They’re also great right from the bag.”, but that is a different story.

In these days of illiteracy and grammatical shortcuts it is especially important for respected companies to set a proper example of correct usage of the English language.

Please reply to this letter as soon as you can and inform me of the steps you intend to take to phase this packaging off of the shelves.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Benny

I'm too lazy to type out the entire reply, but this was worth noting:

I have notified our Marketing department of your concerns and you will be glad to know we will be correcting the sentence to include "of". We would like to apologize for the disappointment and inconvenience this situation has caused you.

I don't believe you need any commentary from me.