The reputation of U.S supermarket chain Wal-Mart took a slight dent this week after a customer exposed a cringeworthy spelling error on one of its cakes.

The cake, which was ordered for a high school class who had recently passed their exams, was supposed to bear text reading: “Congratulations. You did it!”. Unfortunately, when the customer picked it up, it actually read “Congration, you done it”.

The irreparable damage for Wal-Mart was completed after a picture of the cake found its way onto Reddit, the popular internet image feed. So far, it has amassed more than 1,000 comments.

One of the comments, posted by a user called Wolfharte, said:

“Aside from the grammar and spelling, the lines are crooked and its generally just ugly. Why are you shopping at Walmart?”

Wal-Mart, which is the third biggest multinational corporation in the world, is yet to respond to the publicity caused by the error but, as some of the comments suggest, the company’s competence has, perhaps unfairly, been called into question by many.

While to some, the mistake may seem a little insignificant in the grand scheme of things, research has shown that customers use linguistic accuracy to help them make decisions when it comes to choosing which companies to give their money to. This is particularly the case when a business is new and yet to build a strong reputation with its customer base; many new firms choose to enlist the help of a professional copywriting service to ensure mistakes are avoided.

Wal-Mart’s error isn’t the only spelling mistake on the minds of U.S. internet users at the moment. Images have been doing the rounds recently of a new tattoo acquired by 24-year-old NBA superstar Kevin Durant. The text in the design features the word “mautre” instead of “mature”, inviting many comments from tickled sports fans and grammarians.

Graeme Parton

Graeme has experience creating content for online sources and for the radio, and at university he studied Multimedia Journalism.