They may hope to lead our country after the general election, but they certainly can't form a coherent sentence about it.

From party slogans to posters and election promises, almost all of the political parties have made punctuation and spelling errors that would shame a Junior Cert student.

Fianna Fail and Labour have been the biggest blunderers in that they didn't even manage to get their campaign slogan grammatically correct. Fianna Fail's 'Now, The Next Steps' and Labour's 'But, are you happy?' both contain substantial errors.

"These parties seem to have absolutely no idea about commas and capital letters, " said Sarah Marriott, director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists. "The rule about commas is that they should only be inserted where you naturally pause for breath. This doesn't apply to either of these sentences.

"Fianna Fail has also wrongly put capital letters on every word when they should only be put on nouns.

This really is very worrying when you consider that whole committees of people must have approved these slogans without any alarm bells going off."

But these gaffes are just some of many mistakes politicians have been making in the past few weeks. Perhaps the most obvious was Willie O'Dea's blunder in his constituency of Limerick last week, where all of his posters proclaimed him to be part of "Berties's team". The posters had to be quickly replaced when the public picked up on the mistake and O'Dea was left blushing.

In Dublin, both Michael McDowell, leader of the Progressive Democrats, and fellow party member Liz O'Donnell had to quickly change their campaign posters when both appeared with only one 'l' at the end of their names. Michael McDowel and Liz O'Donnel did not look quite so good on paper.

And while they may not be aware of it, the PDs have been displaying a tendency towards fascism by referring to McDowell as Leader with a capital 'l'. On their website, they refer to "Progressive Democrat Leader Michael McDowell" which, according to Marriott, is completely incorrect.

"Some people may think this is unnecessarily picky, but punctuation and grammar can make a big difference in the meaning of words, " said Marriott, referring to a Canadian company that recently lost a $2m contract because of an incorrectly placed comma in a legal document. "And people are becoming more aware of punctuation again. Look at how well Lynne Truss's grammar book [Eats, Shoots & Leaves] sold."

In its manifesto, Labour has said it can "make a difference to the lives of hard working families in Ireland".

But by leaving out the hyphen between hard and working they have changed the entire meaning of the term. They are saying that families are hard (a la Phil Mitchell? ) and working. They're leaving out families that mightn't consider themselves so tough and who may not work at all.

And it's not just on paper that politicians make mistakes. Last month, minister for education Mary Hanafin told TV3 that allegations that the Taoiseach brought money to Manchester were "completely incredulous".

"I didn't know allegations could have emotions, " said Marriott. "Don't we expect better from the education minister?"

Clear Ink offers a Clear English Approval mark to all well-written documents submitted to them. No political party would get one on their current performance, according to Marriott.

"If you want people to believe your facts and recommendations, everything should be written clearly and accurately, " she said. "If political parties can't get the little things like punctuation right, why should voters believe in them?"

ALL OVER THE GAFFE

Fianna Fail Now, The Next Steps SHOULD BE: Now the next steps Berties's team SHOULD BE: Bertie's team Mary Hana"n: "allegations were incredulous" SHOULD BE: "allegations were incredible" Labour But, are you happy?

SHOULD BE: But are you happy?

General Election, Government

SHOULD BE: general election, government Hard working families
SHOULD BE: hard-working families Progressive Democrats Progressive Democrat Leader Michael McDowell
SHOULD BE: Progressive Democrats' leader OR the Progressive Democrat leader