My husband and I have a funny story, in that way couples have stories that have become funny through time and retelling. It’s not about us, of course, but a completely hypothetical couple who isn’t us.

At the time our story takes place, one half of the couple — let’s call that half Apple — was in school and writing a lot of papers, including frequent use of fairly specialized terminology. Making a perfectly reasonable decision, Apple decided to turn off the spell-check feature on the word processing program, lest the squiggly red lines take over the screen entirely.

Unbeknownst to Apple, her partner — we’ll call the partner Bacon — was planning a special gift. Not being an intuitive Red Pen Brigade sort of person, Bacon used the word processor to check the spelling of some words to be engraved on Apple’s shiny new item. Not seeing any squiggly red lines, Bacon happily went off and had a typo engraved on the gift (that’s right… the engraver also didn’t catch the mistake).

Obviously, this not-us story is hilarious, which is why when we find ourselves recounting it, for one reason or another, we totally don’t end up having a disagreement about whether unilaterally turning off the spell-check is a good idea. ANYWAY.

I have a point here, and it has to do with this lovely submission from Ernie.

My point is: this sign was typed. On some sort of digital device connected to a printer. In this day and age.

I choose to believe that the sign author’s spouse/partner/office-mate is a scholar majoring in something with a lot of jargon, like neurobiochemistry. (Squiggly red line!) It doesn’t exactly excuse the author’s spelling decisions, but at least it is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they weren’t fixed.

(Thanks, Ernie!)