Bowl of Skittles
Spotted: 9/20/2016
Creator: @DonaldJTrumpJr
Now, I don’t care much about politics. (Also, the Earth is flat.) But if you’re putting out memes in support of your candidate (even if the candidate happens to be your daddy), its probably best if you get things grammatically correct.
The “bowl of Skittles” meme pushed out yesterday by Donald Trump, Jr., has (as of this writing) 14,391 retweets and 22,245 likes. Of those fans and sharers, nobody seems to have noticed that there are several pretty glaring errors in the text of the meme.
The obvious error is that the entire content in the red box needs to be one sentence. That’s because beginning the first sentence with If turns it into a dependent clause. It has to have an independent clause to make it work. Combining those two sentences (with a comma in between) fixes the problem.
The other issue is the word skittles. Admittedly, there are two definitions of skittles that don’t require capitalization:
- a game played, chiefly in Britain, with wooden pins, typically nine in number, set up at the end of an alley to be bowled down with a wooden ball or disk.
- a pin used in the game of skittles.
The photo used in the meme negates either of these possibilities. You can even see the S on some of the candies. As a businessman, either Trump Jr. or Trump Sr. should be fully aware of the importance of intellectual property—especially registered trademarks. After all, the US Patent and Trademark Office lists trademark registrations for Trump (86817223, 86724574, 86969629), Ivanka Trump (87166216, 87166298, 87172872), Trumpublican (87097920), Trumpocrat (87044834) and a whole menagerie of other word marks.
Skittles is a registered trademark of Mars Incorporated, and should always be capitalized when used to refer to the multi-colored candies made by that company. To be on the safe side (since the brand is undoubtedly used here without permission), it’s probably best to also include the registered trademark symbol (®) to make it clear that the mark is controlled by someone other than Donald Trump (Jr. or Sr.) or the various Trumpublicans and Trumpocrats.
So, as a public service, here’s a revised version of the much-liked, much-shared Skittles meme:
