Gee, thanks for pointing out my typo, putz!

The BBQ Pit
#1

My office sent out a one-sheet this week inviting clients and prospects to an event we’re holding. For this particular one (we do 4-5 per year) we’re discussing investor relations and the SEC’s RegFD, with speakers from the Securities Industry Association and Nasdaq.

Since we don’t have admin people in our office, we all help put these kinds of local marketing materials together. In this case, we titled the event “IR in an FD World.” Another person suggested that, rather than the abbreviated “FD,” we spell out “Fair Disclosure.” I changed it, and forgot to change the article from “an” to “a.” My mistake.

So we send it out, and start getting some RSVPs. Then we get one back, no cover sheet, none of the registration info filled out – all someone has done is circle the “an” and write, in big, thick capital letters, "TYPO."

Well, gee, thanks. That was really productive. I mean, I appreciate you pointing it out and all, but if you weren’t even going to register, what did it benefit you to take the time out of your obviously busy day and do this? Were you really so personally offended by this simple error that you felt compelled to do this? Could you maybe have picked up the phone and said, “I’m on your invite list, and noticed there’s a typo on this most recent one”? Would that have been a little to polite?

Is this how you conduct all your business, you schmuck? By wasting your day pointing out other people’s usage errors? If this guy wasn’t a prospect, and I didn’t value my job, I would’ve printed out a new one, with “a” replacing “an” in 72-pt. bold type, and just scrawled “Better?” on it. Then I would have driven to his office and hand-, or rather foot-delivered it straight up his ass.

#2

I know I’m just bound to get a foot up my ass for this one, but, in the spirit of the thread, I can’t resist pointing out that you meant “too polite”.
Please don’t hurt me :wink:

#3

That’s exactly how I feel when some asswipe feel compelled to point out my typos. Get a fucking hobby, ya knob!

Take comfort in knowing that anal-retentive jackass doesn’t work in your office. Imagine all of your memos coming back corrected like you were in the third grade- who needs that crap?

If you find out who it was, I suggest you let him/her know that you fired the person who made that horribly embarassing error and you appreciate his/her efforts in pointing it out. Let him/her know that it was an office person who had been there for 20 years, but since a client pointed out the error, company policy forced her dismissal. See how that grabs 'em.

Zette

#4

Hey, what a great company to work for! Do they provide dental, too? :smiley:

#5

it won’t… such people are immune to shame.

#6

Wow, Phil, most people wouldn’t even have caught that, since it’s not a spelling or grammar error. I would have, but then, that’s my job. Sounds like the guy is a thoroughly anal jerk! For a copy editor like me, that’s an asset :-)!

#7

(Bolding mine)

Can we get some subject/verb agreement here please? huh? please?

:smiley:

#8

[dissenting opinion] since it wasnt a memo or some other in-house thing, i think its a fairly serious mistake. i think its rude as hell to point out others’ grammar errors, but since this was client-facing documentation, i feel that you are being maybe a bit too blithe about it, pl. to my mind, typos like that in client-facing stuff come across as sloppy and unprofessional.

it was rude for your prospective client to send the form back that way, but maybe s/he was telling you, rudely, of course, that once s/he saw the typo, s/he read no further. [/dissenting opinion]

#9

Eohippus: Damn it! I guess it’s Dennison’s Corollary to Gaudere’s Rule: “Any poster summoning up righteous indignation in response to having his/her grammar corrected will invariably make a grammatical error in so doing.”

essvee: I don’t mind having the error brought to my attention; it was the fact that the person had to be a jackass.

#10

Take heart, Phil. I work as a law clerk to a federal judge. I write many of the decisions that get published in the big books you see behind those lawyers on t.v.

Another judge in another district 400 miles away has a disconcerting habit of tearing pages out of his law books where our cases are published, correcting typos in our decisions, and sending the corrected pages back to us. No note, no nothing. Just the page out of the book with a correction written in in red pen. It’s not like he’s a close personal friend of my judge, or that he’s just goofing on us, he’s just being nitpicky.

(That being said, I used to practice in front of the nitpicky judge, and he was a pretty funny and sharp guy.)

#11

NURLMAN –

With respect, ya’ll need better editing support if this is happening in published decisions, plural. I might not agree with the manners in which these people have chosen to bring the errors to the attention of the responsible parties, but that doesn’t change the fact that typos look like precisely what they are – slipshod work.

When I clerked, a decision was read by no less than five people (the drafting clerk, a second clerk not working on the case (for citation errors), the judge, the judge’s secretary, and a second secretary (for spelling/typo errrors).

This is not to say I never make mistakes; I didn’t live down “pubic schools” until I finished clerking, but at least the mistake was caught before the decision went out of the office to be published.