Basic English: O2 Fail

So this morning at about 7:30am, O2 sent out an email to what is probably millions of punters (judging by the fact that their pre-orders site has crashed and burned) with the headline:

iPhone 3G is here and its free*

Anyone spot the problem with this?

Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about this:

ITS, it’s or its can mean:

  • “its”, the possessive adjective and possessive pronoun form of the personal pronoun it
  • “it’s”, a contraction of “it is” or “it has”
  • The “It’s” man, a man with torn clothes and unkempt beard who appeared at the beginning of episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus

It comes to something when a corporation the size of O2 can’t even be bothered (or doesn’t have the knowledge – a more worrying conclusion) to get basic grammar and punctuation correct on what is unquestionably its biggest launch of the year.