Sunday, June 2, 2013

Grammar Ninja in the Sticks

Based on various signs and printed matter I've seen around the area since I moved here, I'd like to remind everyone of a few things:

1) There's no A in cemetery.  (Seen twice so far spelled cemetary on the signs out front of the cemeteries in question)

2) There's only one R and two Fs in sheriff.  (Courtesy of the newspaper who has a weekly column called 'Sherrif's Sale'.)

3) "I before E except after C or when it sounds like an A as in neighbor and weigh." So the local organization did not recieve a grant.  (Also courtesy of the paper - but in an article this time.)

4) There's only one I in private.  (Seen on a sign across someone's driveway: PRIVITE. KEEP OUT.)

5) Resource only has one S.  (The paper again where an article had it spelled resourse.)

Sure, I'm not the most grammatically awesome person who ever lived - especially here on the internet where my internal editor keeps her mouth shut.  But I figure public signs and newspapers should hold themselves to a higher standard.  This stuff out here is conversational - that stuff isn't.

What's the funniest misspelling you've ever seen in public?  Do poorly spelled words in newspapers give you a case of either the giggles or the WTFs? 

*If you're in another country, some of the above may not hold true.  I'm going off U.S. spelling.

3 comments:

  1. lol those are particularly bad.

    The local newspaper back home always had good stuff in it, like yours. The most recent was "in lou" instead of "in lieu". Every time I think of it, it makes me snicker. Poor, poor Lou.

    I've also seen "Twighlight" at a local CD/DVD store. And at a movie theatre once, it said, "The Propasal."

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  2. Don't point out the mistakes to the paper. They'll hire you. For free. Whether you want to be hired or not. Just sayin'... :)

    Typos drive me bonkers--in professionally edited books, newspapers, and magazines. Spell checker is the worst thing that ever happened to literacy.

    The funniest was in a legal brief submitted to the Court of Appeals (where I worked at the time) dealing with a probate matter. The plaintiff kept talking about the SOUL HEIR. Yeah, that should have been SOLE, dude.

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