Holidays I've Missed

So I haven't been blogging much lately.  Sorry to my six loyal fans.  Thanks for not unsubscribing.  You're all super.

Anyhow, I had several things for holidays that I have now missed.  Here are the two best, and if I can figure out how to get the third best one off my phone, I'll put that up, too.

First, proof that even huge companies with huge advertising budgets putting tons of money into full-page ads in giant newspapers that should also be proofreading can screw up big time:

Are you sure they're not worth more than a turkey dinner, History.com?  You know, maybe the story is untold for a reason.  A reason such as no one literate being available to tell it.

And here's a little bit of love for you.

Well, maybe not you.  Everyone except you, perhaps.

And what happened to the apostrophe in Valentine's Day?  Or the periods at the end of the two miniature sentences at the bottom?

Apparently, they were also excepted.

Misanthropes from Injury

I write for a few local newspapers, and I have been known to include typos in my work.  Not intentionally, mind you, as if to discover whether or not my editors are actually doing their jobs, but because I find editing my own work really difficult.  I know what it's supposed to say, so my brain often tricks me into thinking things are correct even when they aren't.

Apparently, I am not the only person with this problem:

I'm not going to comment on the random capitalization (I know it's the beginning of each line and that's not exactly random, but it's pretty random in terms of rules for capitalization).  Instead, I would like to focus on the line that reads, "To avoid others from injury!"

My response to this line is, "Huh?"

Is Injury the city in which the Fitness Centre is located, and because it wasn't the first word in the line, it just didn't get that much-deserved capital I?  And how will putting away my weights after I use them save me from coming into contact with other people from what apparently would have to be my hometown?  And is everyone who uses the Fitness Centre such a complete misanthrope that directions for avoiding others is desirable?

Extra words...What I really need are some extra words.

I've been hanging on to this little beauty for a while because I hadn't quite decided if it was a grievous enough error to be considered a disaster.  But I've decided to go ahead with it because of the enthusiasm in the last line.

You probably realize that the phrase, "the usage of," really irks me because it's such a glaring example of how not to be concise.  It's not technically grammatically incorrect, but stylistically, it gets low marks.

What I really love, though, is that Management is apparently the cell phone abuser.  Why else would the sign so enthusiastically thank Management for refraining from using his cell phone in line?

Avoiding conflict

You can always tell if a store owner has gotten fed up with a particular issue or complaint when he or she puts up a sign to deal with it.  Think about the signs at grocery stores and other places that sell cigarettes and beer: "We ID Under XX" implies that if you are under XX, you need to have your ID ready or put the beer and smokes back.   "We do not sell firewood," really says, "Please stop asking for firewood."  "Donated items only" indicates that the food bank people are tired of sorting the garbage out of the food collection bin.

Of course, sometimes a sign made for such a reason gives an unintended message.

Such as, "I'm a jerk." 

And apparently a jerk without much background in the difference between to and too.

Just don't ask us to proofread them.

I have to admit, though: it's a good-looking sign.  You know, except for the glaring misuse of an apostrophe.

Your not good with you're contractions.

I've found a glut of your and you're mistakes lately.  Here are some favorites:

Anyone else disturbed by the fact that a funeral home is asking you to rest in peace on the bench they provided?  The misuse of your is bad enough, but the idea that someone may be waiting behind the bench to embalm me is too much.  I won't get into the weird periods that seem to be trying to indicate there are abbreviations where there clearly aren't any.

You know, I've been to The Limited, and for what they charge for sweaters, I think they should be able to afford a proofreader.  Or a copywriter skilled in English grammar.

My what is on camera?  Disturbingly, this sign appears to me to be on a port-a-potty door.  I could be totally wrong about that, though.

I included this one just to prove that the your and you're confusion doesn't just happen in one direction.  With punctuation like that, I think I'll skip the reentry.

Correcting errors

It's one thing to make a mistake in a sign and not realize it.  It's another thing entirely to realize it and try to correct it.

The error practically disappears, doesn't it?

This lovely specimen is from www.thereifixedit.com.  If' you enjoy a good laugh at incredibly misguided, unskilled, and creative do-it-yourselfers, you'll enjoy the blog. 

Form Failure

Verbs have different forms for a reason.  I know this.  You know this.  But apparently that information is not universally understood:

(thud, thud, thud)

Do you hear that?

 

(thud, thud, thud)

It's me pounding my head on the computer desk in front of me.

 

(thud, thud, thud)

Repeatedly.

I get that certain verb forms actually are tricky.  The past tense of lie being lay, for example.  Or pretty much all irregular past perfect forms for another.

But these aren't tricksters, folks.  They're just regular, standard present-tense-required verbs.  Yes, yes.  I know that thrown is the irregular past perfect form of throw.  But that's not what's called for here.  Why make it harder than it is?

(thud, thud, thud)

I've completely misunderstood this campaign

Until I found this picture of a Sara Lee truck, I thought the Sara Lee slogan was, "Nobody does it like Sara Lee." 

I'm not a fan of the double negative.  I realize that in this case, it says exactly what the Sara Lee people want it to say, but that's beside the point in my opinion.  The ends do not justify the means here. 

And in my defense, I frequently mix up song and jingle lyrics--sometimes hilariously so.  I can't tell you how many times I have been obnoxiously singing loudly off-key along with a song I love when someone I'm with (yes, I make my friends and family members endure the horror of my singing) says, "What did you just say?"  Then I have to repeat the lyrics as I understand them, only to be laughed at and corrected.

This time, though, I have the last laugh.  Sort of.

Nothing like making it permanent

Let me start by explaining that I don't have any tattoos.  I almost got one during spring break my freshman year of college in Panama City.  It would have been a parrot, for the record.  No words.

Because words, my friends, can be tricky.  Even if you tell the tattoo artist the correct way to spell and punctuate, you aren't guaranteed that your very permanent new body art will actually be correct.

I'm not sure it's entirely the tattoo artist's fault here:

In case you're having trouble, it reads, "Its not the cards your delt in life its how you play them."

Okay, so, um, contractions seem to be a problem.  And spelling.  And punctuation.

I don't want to seem like a jerk here, but if you're putting something permenent (Have I mentioned how permanent tattoos are?) on your body, and that something contains a word or phrase or clause or group of clauses, wouldn't you do everything in your power to ensure that it was correct before the ink goes in?

Apparently not.

And if you enjoyed this, you may want to check out where I found it: http://www.chrisconnollyonline.com/.  He's got an entire post dedicated to body art with grammatical and spelling failures.  The site does use some strong and suggestive language, so proceed with caution.

One letter changes so much

As subject-verb agreement goes, this is a pretty major offense:

In all fairness, I'm almost 100% certain that the final A just fell off this sign.  Even the centering is off without the extra letter.  The sign is in such good condition otherwise, though, that it does make you wonder.  Maybe it was scraped off by a grammar-hating troglodyte.

Because only a troglodyte could hate grammar enough to do something like that.

Lookin' for love in all the wrong places

I've told students time and time again that if they learn to use colons and semicolons correctly, they will seem more educated when they write.  Of course, use them incorrectly, and you wind up looking like a bumbling idiot:

The only thing that surprises me about this study is that no one proofread it before posting it on the internet.

Oh, wait.  That doesn't surprise me at all.  But that's because I'm a sex skinnier woman; nothing surprises us.

Grammatical revelation

I'm a fan of witty church signs.  You know, the ones that say things like, "A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing," or, "Don't give up; Moses was once a basket case," or, "Soul food served here."  I know they're cheesy, and I know not everyone appreciates them, but I enjoy them.

Of course, screw it up, and the message may not say what is intended:

Nothing, that is, except homophones.

Not just an option

End punctuation.  It's so final.  And for those who have completion anxieties, it's probably just too scary to use it.  I'm guessing the person who typeset this sign had such a complex:

It would be one thing if there were no periods at all on the sign.  Then one could assume that punctuation in general just doesn't work well on this type of sign or with the equipment used to make the sign.  But that's not the case.  In fact, one could argue that the punctuation following 13th, 17th, 18th, and 21st is superfluous (or at least inappropriate; except for the last one, they could be commas).  In fact, if the typesetter had just used those periods after the sentences, there would have been exactly enough to appropriately punctuate them all.

That brings us to another little issue: fragments.  The first two "sentences" are not actually complete.  They're fragments.  The next two, though, are complete sentences.  I guess I'm just wondering, with all that blank space at the bottom of the sign, why the first two phrases couldn't have been made complete sentences?  Or if space really was an issue, why the two complete sentences weren't reworded more concisely in order to make space for all sentences to be complete?  With periods.

Of course, there's no year provided on this historical marker, either, so apparently several necessities were deemed optional.

And what's up with the assault on the Peach Orchard?  Why was the slaughter of innocent peach trees necessary?  Unless they referred to the Union troops as "Peach Orchard."  Now, I'm no military person, but I'm thinking you'd want the code name for the enemy's troops to be both easier to say and less, um, I don't know, cheerful sounding.

Maybe that's just me.

Mistake's Using Apostrophe's

Why?  Why do so many people think that adding an s automatically requires the addition of an apostrophe?  It just doesn't make sense.  Plurality and possession are fairly basic writing skills to master.  Still, adding apostrophes to words that are intended to be merely plural seems to be a tremendously widespread problem.

Expert's only what?  What does the expert own only one of?  Possibly an exclamation point.  And that's it, right there: the expert's only exclamation point.  Definitely worthy of a permanent sign, don't you think?  And a lovely sign, too: complete with some simple graphics and a little graffiti.  Nice.

 

I won't go into the superfluous use of quotation marks, but apparently the margarita here has $1,99 Mon to Thurs (or some other days).  But only with your dinner (or something rather unlike a dinner).  To be fair, I'm fairly certain that the writer of this sign may not speak English as a first language.

Orange peel aroma's what?  Aroma?  And it is equally enjoyable on it is own.  Yeeaahhhhh.  And don't get me started on the lack of a terminal comma and the weird sentence fragment that lacks parallel structure.

I'm guessing that the sign writer couldn't recall the spelling rule for changing y to ie when adding s, so he or she just added an apostrophe.  Of course, maybe the writer just doesn't know how to pluralize anything: product wasn't pluralized at all.  Not even incorrectly.

Sometimes there just isn't anything to say.

In need of divine intervention

Historically speaking, there are a number of things that have been done in the name of God that weren't very, um, godly.  And while a confusion of homophones certainly doesn't rank up there with any sort of religious war, it's definitely bad:

At least it has some rhythm and meter, eh?

Let's hope it's a joke.

I can't recall exactly where I found this little clipping--online somewhere--but I hope it's a joke.  I hope Lynzee Stauss is a budding satirist still trying to get a grip on a difficult genre.  Or that she's not a real person, and this is all faked.

Wow.  There are feminists planning rallies against this little op-ed or rolling over in their graves as we speak.  Sorry, ladies. 

So many errors.  Let me explain.  No, no.  There is too much; let me sum up.

Paragraph 1: shifts in person, pronoun-antecedent agreement, failure to use an apostrophe with a contraction, misplaced modifier, spelling issues

Paragraph 2: (Oh, crap! The whole rest of the article is the second paragraph.)  failure to divide paragraphs, pronoun-antecedent agreement, awkward construction, shifts in person, spelling issues, confusion of because and cause, misplaced modifiers, failure to hyphenate multiple-word adjectives, general comma issues, sentence fragment

I'm tempted at this point to rail against the message of the article, but I think that is done so well by the writing itself that it's truly unnecessary for me to do it (even though I really, really want to). 

Okay.  My blood pressure is coming back into the borderline range again.  I'll be fine.  Really.

Whoa.  Where are my beta blockers? 

I truly hope this has been photoshopped or something.  Surely no one would misspell something in 6-foot-tall letters, right?  Especially a word that is only four letters in length and written on a sign right next to the area to be painted.

It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite football commercials.

UPDATE: After a brief search for Lynzee Strauss, I found that this poor girl really did herself in with this article posted on the internet in 1996.  All sorts of nastiness ensued.  I'm guessing, based on the numerous things I read, that "College Isn't Necessary" was a poor attempt at satire. 

I'll have one of everything.

Have you ever been to a restaurant where everything on the menu looks so good that you just want to order one of everything?  Apparently, these folks feel the same way about punctuation:

"Yeah, I'll take a well-placed terminal comma, but I'd like to substitute a misplaced semicolon for the other comma, and I'll have a side of ellipses instead of a colon, please."

Except rather than ordering one of everything, it's like ordering spaghetti and meatballs with a tuna fish instead of one of the meatballs and peanut butter instead of garlic bread. It's a vomit-inducing plateful of poor punctuation choices.

Also Known As

I'm really a bit of a purist when it comes to quotation marks.  I prefer for them to be used only for direct quotations.  I realize that that hope is not based entirely in reality, however.

Because quotation marks are also often used to indicate that something is not authentic or an imperfect substitute or something other than what it is called, misuse of quotation marks, particularly by those who use them as a misguided way to draw attention to or put emphasis on a word or group of words, can be quite hilarious.

So they might be Black Angus steaks, but they darned sure are not certified.  The word certified, by the way, was in quotation marks everywhere it occurred in the menu.  If you're going to use them incorrectly, I suppose you might as well use them consistently incorrectly, eh?

And then there's this high note of quotation mark misusage hilarity:

Actually, it's far more sad than hilarious.

I'm not sure what the EXes are all about, and I'm not going to get into a discussion about the use of till instead of until.  That's a gripe for another day.  There's just so much wrong with almost everything in that sign, it's hard to me to see straight at this point.  My eyes are burning.  Look away!

If your retinas are not aflame from the atrocity above, you may want to check out The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.  Hilarious stuff over there.  Better, even, than the examples above.