Saturday 17 December 2011

"Up to" and "from"

In shops desperate for our custom this Christmas there seems to be a proliferation of annoying uses of 'up to' and 'from'.

My lovely sister, Brenda (who nags me if I don't occasionally say nice things about her in my blog), is rightly irritated by TX Max's claim: 'Always up to 60% off.' As she points out, this seeks to mislead, since even, say, a 1% reduction would qualify as being 'up to 60% off'. All I can deduce from this claim is that TK Max will never reduce anything by more than 60%!

Then there is the Christmas shop in Norwich with three signs advertising their Christmas cards as being 'from 19p', 'from 39p' and 'from 59p'. The first of these is all they need, since any price 19p or higher is 'from 19p'. The 'from 19p' collection could include cards costing £100 each, for example.





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