The Princeton Review has apologized to Taylor Swift after it got a lyric of hers wrong in an SAT practice test. Part of the apology includes giving two lucky grammar buffs tickets to see the singer.
Earlier this week, a Tumblr user pointed out that the Princeton Review had published an incorrect quote from Swift’s 2009 song “Fifteen.” Swift re-blogged the post, writing, “Not the right lyrics at all pssshhhh.”
The test said that Swift sings “Somebody tells you they love you, you got to believe ‘em” in the song, when she really sings, “Somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them.”
On Tuesday, the Princeton Review tweeted an apology, writing, “Sorry @taylorswift13! We’ll make it up to you. Pick a #grammar lover fan. 2 tickets to a U.S. show on us!”
Despite admitting the error, Princeton Review SVP-publisher Rob Franek told MTV News that the error the test was pointing out in the real lyric is still true. The test was trying to point out that Swift incorrectly used the plural pronoun “them” after referring to her subject as the singular “somebody.”
That means that the grammatically correct versions of the sentence would be “Somebody tells you he/she loves you, you’re gonna believe him/her” or “Some people tell you they love you, you’re gonna believe them.”
“I appreciate her response, but the question on the grammar still holds true,” Franek said. “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.”
image via Twitter from The Princeton Review
image courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com