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.