From Jessica: “I’m glad to have been wished a good morning . . . that is, if I am who I say I am!”
It’s also worth noting that Jessica signed her submission e-mail thusly:
“Jessica”
This is either a calculated attempt to drive me nuts, or a subtle hint that Jessica has been replaced by a Pod Person.
There are already plenty of reasons to admire Ken Jennings. And I suppose it isn’t really a surprise to find out that he’s a self-proclaimed “grammar Nazi.” It is, however, delightful to find that he’s willing to have his rants linked on Red Pen Brigade! R0x0r!
So anyway, check out this lovely post from last September, which I couldn’t restate better myself. I am also going to slap one of the pictures from that post right here, because it’s too good to miss, even if you don’t click through. (But you should; the blog’s fun.)
Thanks, Ken!
Look what else I just found in my archives that I apparently never posted?
Sarah, who rocks, says “I would like to explore the possibility of learning to spell.”
Apparently Scott sent me this a long time ago and I totally, completely ingored him. This is either because it just slipped through the cracks, or because I hate Scott. You pick. 😛
I do love this picture, though. It is such a beautiful example of the worst kind of error. This one wasn’t made by a harried clerk with a drying-out Sharpie. It isn’t even a homophone missed by spell-check. This baby is 100% pure wrong.
Repeat submitter Shannon found this gem in the comments of a boingboing article about absinthe . He says:
Comment 20, attached here for your red-penning pleasure. I usually give weblog comments a free pass, but the spoonerism is just too appealing on this one.
This is one of those ones where I would really love to meet the author. People who use big words often love words, and some people who love words love to theorize about where words come from. There are entire hours of NPR dedicated to the origin of words. Where would a word-lover suppose that “psycho-semitic” would have come from, in order for it to make sense in this context? I’d love to read that story.
I snapped this photo because of the happy misuse of quotation marks. But the more I look at it, the more disturbed I am just in general. It’s… a skin towel? But only a “bath towel”? The towel did have a fabulous zebra print to it, but I’m pretty sure it was made of totally synthetic fibers, and if it were made of skin I don’t think I’d consider that a selling point. Weird.
I saw this, and I flipped the board over while thinking to myself, “Please let the answer have something to do with eggs…”
Alas, it doesn’t. It has to do with their liking to lie in the sun. LIE in the sun. In fact, the internets assure me that hornbills tend to LAY (their eggs) in hollow trees. The more you know!
The dreaded grocery-store bakery strikes again. I was so excited about the “grad’s” that I almost missed the gratuitous quotation marks!
With approximately 11,000 stores in the United States, Starbucks has definitely earned the right to have its name spelled correctly. The ONLY way this is acceptable is if it’s actually a Battlestar Galactica-themed cafe. Which would actually be really cute, come to think of it.
Contributor John submits: “I saw this one in the in-flight magazine on a flight to Mexico. It’s a bit different from your usual fare, but I certainly found it confusing.”
Fear not, John; wrong is wrong, whether grammatical, factual, or logical. Alas, a Red Pen-er’s work is never done.
That said: MAJOR SURVEY-WRITING FAIL.
