That's incredibly irritating! I think our reaction is an editor thing... I went to lunch with copyeditors a few years back, and they spent most of the hour finding mistakes on the menu.

You are brilliant. As an employee I can tell you that this was caught internally before we went to press. But it was too far gone to stop.

When faced with a blunder like this, the only thing to do is pretend it is play on words and hope that you can get away with it. I give you a gold star for grammar. You 4th grade English teacher must be so proud.

Ah, smart of you to have emailed them. I found this by googling this product's phrase because I saw it in Costco and couldn't believe my eyes. I just stood still, picked up the product and showed my sister. I can't believe what all these bad misspellings and grammar has come to. It's on their product boxes, web site, all over. I just had to do a litle research and see if it was an accident or not.

David, your comment comes across as sarcasm and criticism aimed at Mark for saying anything. It is so easy to pretend that this is just some sort of needless nit-picking, and if this mistake weren't spread so visibly far and wide, Mark's post could be just that. But it isn't.

Literacy is hugely important. Our language is how we communicate with each other. Grammar rules are there so that we each have a consistent way of forming our communications so that others can understand us. In some cases, not being able to understand something can lead to loss of lives. (And yes, I mean REAL grammar rules, not the kind of superstitious hogwash that passes for grammar "rules" that so many English teachers teach.)

When things are misspelled or are just plain grammatically incorrect, people with a weaker grasp of spelling and grammar get confused and often propagate the error. Think of all the apostrophe errors alone that you see ("We sell TV's and Video's"), not to mention other spelling and grammar errors. Those who are in a position of modeling good grammar and spelling should be as responsible and correct as possible.

The fact that this error was spotted but was "too far gone to stop" indicates some kind of rampant problem at Seagate. How many people looked at this from the very start and said it was fine? Did they say it was fine because they didn't know better, or were they afraid to speak up and correct somebody? Either way, there's a problem. In any case, it discredits Seagate in my eyes and makes me wonder what other errors are being swept under the rug. Snarky comments from Seagate employees certainly don't help the cause.

When people spell "you're" as "your" it makes my head hurt too! What a stupid ad on the part of Seagate (I still like their drives, though)

I just received a package from Amazon that contained a Seagate ad with this phrase on it and I had exactly the same reaction as you: Is there a play on words that I'm missing? Don't they realize that most people seem to have forgotten the difference between your and you're anyway? I'm floored to find that it was a true mistake. What's even stranger is that "your" is used correctly *10 times* on the front and back of the card. If I were ever in the market for an external hard drive (doubt it), I seriously would not buy theirs because I have to conclude they're a band of idiots.

I just makes me laugh thinking that someone actually convinced all these folks that this is cool. All these sycophants with nobody sane enough to stand up and tell the emperor he's in the buff.

"Your On" is totally retarded.

Okay so contrary to what some of you might have heard from their customer service, I got a reply from someone in Seagate media relations who says it is correct. They want to convey that Seagate is your ON. As in, they are your trigger or switch into the storage world or something. Perhaps this is damage control?

Lol... I too saw this in Costco on a package for a 750gb ext. hdd. I just had to search to see if anyone else had noticed this mistake. My wife and I had a discussion about it and the capitalized "O". Sharp eyes and minds of society unite! heh heh

How funny.... I'm also here after the grammatical error caught my eye during a trip to Costco. I have to wonder just how many people signed off on this ad and the product packaging... hard to believe they could ALL miss something so glaring.

Still, I don't think it was intentional... I think it's a result of our spelchekur world where mis-spellings/usages don't get noticed.

We should get used 'tuit'.

Went to the seagate website, and then I HAD to google it to try to understand (this page is first in the result). WTF are they thinking?

I just noticed this in a Newegg advertisement that was even more confusing ("Wherever you are FreeAgent. Your On."). If the wording was something like "FreeAgent is your On," then it would be clear that they were attempting to use "on" as a noun, but the press report suggests otherwise. Either way, it's confusing and not a good marketing attempt (unless they were hoping for extra publicity from the mistake...).

That's funny.

"My on?" It isn't MY on, maybe it's your on. Or maybe his on.

Marina: +1. I get really sad when people say that accuracy in language doesn't matter. I prefer to take comments like that to mean "Well, nothing *I* say is important enough to bother to get right."

It's not a spelling mistake. This is how marketing people think, and probably, after being exposed to dozens of even worse mottos, they managed to convince the executives this was actually good.
"Your On" is meant to be understood as "Seagate is your 'On' button to the wonderiferous fantastigorical world of digital data storage". Ridiculous, but that's how marketing types think. Apparently, it's irrelevant that most consumers won't get it. Frankly, I think not getting it is a good thing; if you actually understand that phrase right away, you're probably psychotic (or maybe I should say 'Your Psychotic')