The Sea of Gallilee (in northern Israel) is a beautiful place, especially during the spring and autumn, when it’s not to hot. However, late every afternoon, a strong breeze comes in from the Mediterranian, blowing down tents and freezing bathers. Thoughtfully, the city of Tiberius put up signs warning tourists of this well known phenomenon. Good intentions, however, do not always lead to good results, and thus there is at least one beach-side sign stating, and I quote:
BEWARE OF WESTERN WIMPS
I think the R in Rocks was replaced by a C, maybe.
Right before Thanksgiving, I saw several posters advertising “Cajun Fried Turkey’s”. What is so special about that damn apostrophe, that everyone (present company excepted, of course!) adds one to every plural?
:::waving hand wildy:::
[Arnold Horshack voice]
Ooh!
Oooh! Oooh!
Oooh!
[/Arnold Horshack voice]
This week’s Newsweek, the one with Oprah on the cover. There is a picture of Oprah with author Wally Lamb, passing out copies of one of his books. The caption says they are passing out copies of “She’s Come Undone” but you can clearly see it is actually “I Know This Much Is True” that they are distributing.
Actually, according to my dictionary the two spellings are equivalent. Both can mean “ditch” or “lesbian.”
My God, that’s obvious. Thanks for pointing it out, anyway.
1)The other day I was reading the booklet notes of a new CD collection of violin music by Nicoló Paganini. In one instance his name appeared as “Faganini”.
2)My company distributed a flyer advertising open positions for copy editors. It said: “…help to make sure that our written content reads as good as possible.” It wasn’t a joke–I asked (and felt pretty awkward for asking after my boss didn’t seem to get the point).
3)Scientific American, and I think a couple of other magazines, ran an ad in the pre-christmas season that included a well-known christmas carol written out on staff paper (I can’t remember which carol at the moment). It had wrong notes, an incorrect key signature, and other obvious notational mistakes. Why is it that people always treat written music with “artistic” (i.e. ignorant) license on posters, cards, etc., when they are usually so careful with words?
In the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune in late 1973, there was an article about euthanasia. Throughout the article, it was spelled “youth in Asia.”
[screeching halt]
Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!
You have pointed out another of my many pet peeves! Especially when the quarter and eighth notes are not filled in, and the flags and beams are on the wrong sides of the stems, and the chromatics are behind the notes instead of in front of them, and the beats per measure are way too many for the time signature, and the notes shown don’t even match up with the key signature, fergawdssakes!
::takes deep breath::
We now return you to your regular rant.
::goes off to mangle something::
[/screeching halt]
Not technically a typo – rather an unfortunate juxtaposition.
Back in late September you’ll recall that RU-486 pill was approved. Also, the Olympic games were going on that week, and Marion Jones was going for her five gold medals.
One of the local papers in Chicago ran side by side headlines on the front page:
ABORTION PILL APPROVED - - MARION TAKES TWO
I guess this sort of counts. I have a friend who is into the custom Japanese car scene. A friend of his does custom paint for these cars, including painting Japanese characters on them. The only trouble is, he doesn’t understand Japanese and, except for a few standards like “tiger” or “dragon”, just makes up symbols that look good to him. So basically most of his work is gibberish.
This kind of thing seems to be common. My girlfriend (who is from China) enjoys pointing out things like that. It seems like shirts especially get it wrong. Most of the time, they are real words but make no sense. She says it’s like someone flipped through a dictionary and picked words at random.
Saw an ad in the Eureka Springs (Arkansas) Times-Echo - a commerical building for rent that said “Commercial Frontage With Great Excrement.” Not sure what they meant - unless the last tenant just left all his shit there.
I think we have a winner – from yesterday’s Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14573-2001Jan3.html
I was driving by a local elementary school about a year ago when I saw a large, professionally printed sign that made me stop and gawk in disbelief. I even came back and took a picture so I could share the irony with my college English students (even though we spend very little class time discussing grammar; I expect them to know it already).
The sign read “Recipient’s of Outstanding Educators Award.”
I weep for the future.
Also, it sounds like our local paper is a lot like many of yours; grammatical and spelling errors are a way of life. Just to pull a random example from the overflowing cornucopia of errors, we find this recent headline:
“Residents Make Due with Limited Budget.”
I just came across this one as I was looking for info about Road Runner service:
Representative’s what? Technician’s what? Are they going to bring their pets to do the install? You can see this at www.cablesites.com/road_runner/ .
I just picked up a copy of the Spectator, the local free paper which carries Uncle Cecil’s column.
The paper’s lead article, about the legal doctrine of Eminent Domain, had a big headline, Imminent Domain, which I thought was just a play on words. Then I noticed that all six times it was referenced in the text of the article–including twice when they were quoting someone–it was still referred to as “imminent” domain.
I wonder how long it was after the issue went out before someone noticed the error. (The typos have all been corrected in the online version at: http://www.spectatoronline.com/notebook_feature.html)
Just before I left the UK, Private Eye had a doozy from a local newspaper from Suffolk. It was from a job advert for a secretarial position in the West Suffolk Conservative Association. Somehow the word “Conservative” got warped into “Cuntservative.”
I almost hesitate to call that one a typo, because I find it hard to believe that mistake was accidental.
There is a billboard advertising land that I pass every day. It says “Will build to suite.” I’m thinking of setting it on fire…
In my local paper, during the Kosovo crisis, on of our Senators was misquoted, so it sounded pretty stupid: “The Siberians are a strong people. The Siberians will not give up without a fight!”
Another time, they misspelled euthanasia horribly, leaving me thinking, “So why do these Asian kids want to commit suicide?”
I’ve also noticed that of all things The New York Times has had a lot of typos recently. This is a sign of the end.
Bob’s quick guide to the Apostrophe, you Idiots.
Found this last night. I think it applies to the present situation.
In our local newspaper I read this in the classifieds. It was for a gun for sale but was printed this way,
357 Super Black Cock
$350.00 FIRM
Well, for $350.00 it better be FIRM!
