Abstract This study attempts to investigate the mixing of English in Chinese newspaper advertisements in Hong Kong and Macao in terms of 1) product categories, 2) syntactic categories, 3)intentions, 4) place of origin, and 5) linguistic deviation/innovation. For this investigation, the Oriental Daily News(東方日報) and the Macao Daily News(澳門日報) are chosen for data collection. Issues of two weeks are investigated. The process of data analysis includes analyzing the text and counting the frequency of the elements concerned. Furthermore, the findings from the two newspapers are put into comparison. The results indicate that the main product categories in which English expressions are found most frequently are Travel/Airlines, Health products/Tonics, and Fashion in the Oriental Daily News, while in the Macao Daily News, English mixing occurs mostly in the categories of Gaming/Sauna/Night-clubs, Food/Restaurants/Beverages, and Automobiles/Motorcycles. As regards the syntactic categories, Common noun/noun phrase outnumbers any other categories and occurs most frequently in both newspapers. With regard to intentions, in the Oriental Daily News, English mixing is largely for an indication of fashion, superiority and authority and for the copywriter to get rid of the requirement of circumlocution in translation. As for the Macao Daily News, the mixing is mainly for creating an exotic flavor and a hint of fashion, superiority and authority. Concerning the place of origin of the product in an advertisement, the number of local products prevails over those of imported products. Regarding linguistic deviation and innovation, in the Oriental Daily News, the transformation of parts of speech and redundancy are most obviously seen. In the Macao Daily News, aside from the transformation of parts of speech, the device of punning occurs the most. In conclusion, the findings drawn from this study may reflect the social ethos and language use of contemporary Hong Kong and Macao as well as the difference between these two places. They may also provide some hints for further studies no matter in the field of sociolinguistics or that of advertising.