One Less Grammar Blunder on TV

Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite books is “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss. I think I fell in love with her when I got to the part where she talks about her outrage at the title of a certain popular Hugh Grant film:

It should be “Two Weeks‘ Notice”! Truss said she wanted to put a giant apostrophe on a stick and stand beneath the theater marquee so that people would know what the title should have been.

It seems to me there have been a whole lot of similar grammatically incorrect titles out there recently. Within only 30 minutes of watching TV today, I saw commercials for

It should be “10 Items or Fewer.” Maybe TBS was trying to be very funny?

It should be “Welcome home, Roscoe Jenkins.” Apparently Roscoe’s teachers never taught him the comma used in direct addresses.

But the worst of all during that span of time was the commercials advertising Gardasil. Don’t get me wrong — I am all about preventing HPV. But Gardasil’s entire marketing campaign is based on their slogan “One less,” which they use to mean “One less woman to be at risk for cervical cancer.”

It should be “One fewer“! I realize that doesn’t make nearly as catchy of a slogan, but you’d think a company that’s trying to persuade you to pay lots of money to be stuck with giant needles would want to sound as credible as possible. The Gardasil commercial makes the same blunder as “10 Items or Fewer,” but the Gardasil one got to me so much more because the entire commercial is just woman after woman saying, “One less,” “One less.” My eye twitched each time, and by the end of the ad, I think I’d developed a facial tic.

Why are movies, TV shows, album titles, advertisements, etc. seemingly exempt from grammar rules? Do only a few people at the top decide the name for the show or film and don’t care enough to double-check it, or do many people look these things over and it just gets by them all? Does no one know what’s correct, or do they just sacrifice accuracy for whatever’s catchiest?

Follow-up question: Am I the only one bothered by these composition titles in flagrant violation of grammatical accuracy? Are there people who are pro-grammar but think I’m being too OCD with this?