Problems with Virtual Entrances

Yesterday I was checking one of my Twitter feeds on my iPhone. Because I use the free version of the application, advertisements appear at the top of the feed.

Naturally, I can’t get it to come up now, so I’ll have to use my amazing powers of recall. The ad was asking me to consider upgrading to the professional edition, “Now Available on the App Store.”

How awkward does this sound to you? Because it sounds really awkward to me.

However much your iPhone experience may resemble a virtual reality, you do not literally go into Web sites on Safari or into applications like the new one from Starbucks: you view them. Perhaps that’s why the copywriter recoiled at the idea of browsing “in” the App Store.

But English is English is English, and if the software or Web site is called a “store,” you have no choice but to go into it, because suddenly the reader is envisioning themselves on the roof of a TJ Maxx. And nobody wants that.

People go onto Web sites, yes, but they into applications, and unless they’re roofers or superheroes, they most certainly go into stores. That’s just the way it is. Don’t go trying to mix it up.