Princeton Review misquotes, apologizes to Taylor Swift
For a company that seeks academic excellence, the Princeton Review sure did drop the ball on a fundamental aspect: accuracy.
For a company that seeks academic excellence, the Princeton Review sure did drop the ball on a fundamental aspect: accuracy.
The Princeton Review, which creates and administers the SAT practice test, found out the hard way that it had misquoted Reading native Taylor Swift and charged the singer with improper grammar when a fan brought the misquote to Ms. Swift's attention.
(Tumblr)
A grammar question in the test used a lyric from Swift's song "Fifteen." The Princeton Review misquoted the lyric as saying, "Somebody tells you they love you, you got to believe 'em." Her actual "Fifteen" lyric says, "Somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them."
Taylor responded to a Tumblr post showing the misquote saying, "Not the right lyrics at all pssshhhh. You had one job, test people. One job."
People at the Princeton Review caught wind of the error and offered the singer, of which they are "big" fans, an apology.
"Sorry @taylorswift13," the Review wrote on Twitter with an image of a makeshift corrected lyric.
However, being the grammar sticklers they are, the Princeton Review's SVP-publisher Rob Franek told MTV News on Tuesday, "I appreciate her response, but the question on the grammar still holds true."
He continued, "If we look at the whole sentence, it starts off with 'somebody,' and 'somebody,' as you know, is a singular pronoun, and if it's singular, the rest of the sentence has to be singular," meaning the subsequent "them" in the quote is, indeed, still grammatically incorrect.
Regardless, the Princeton Review has offered to send two "grammar lover" Taylor Swift fans to one of her U.S. concerts for its part in the grammatical gaffe.
No word yet on whether Swift has taken the Princeton Review up on that offer.