Grammar
Jeff Deck came across a ‘’no tresspassing sign’’ that has bothered him for years – double s in trespassing!
And so began the TEAL – Typo Eradication Advancement League. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson document their travels across America in their book - The Great Typo Hunt. Two friends changing the world. One correction at a time. Armed with markers, correcting typos they found wasn’t an easy task. People don’t always react positively to having their errors pointed out to them so our heroes needed to soften their approach as they can easily get into the very heart of somebody’s sense of worth sometimes. They couldn’t just say: you know what; you don’t know how to spell. It’s a natural reaction to get defensive when somebody points out your mistakes. They tried to be sensitive and approached people as courteously as possible and emphasised the fact that they were only going after the mistakes themselves and not the people who made them. They shifted their mission from not just correcting single errors to asking everybody to always have a second look as it is human to make mistakes.
My favourite typo correction Jeff and Ben made was to do with my beloved type of typos and probably one of the most common ones – unnecessary apostrophe. I’ve written about it in the past but just a short reminder: we have an apostrophe when it’s a contraction – it is/it has but its as a possessive pronoun does not need an apostrophe. People argue back because possessives need apostrophes and that’s the rule, however, they forget that pronouns are the exception! They found an apostrophe on the sign where it didn’t belong but it had been written on the white board for so long that it wouldn’t wipe off so the lady came out, grabbed their marker and changed the apostrophe into a little star, then she added a couple more stars and it looked as if there never was to be an apostrophe.
Follow Jeff on Twitter @TEALJeffDeck and check out his website http://www.greattypohunt.com The book is definitely worth reading too. Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, says:
It was exciting to accompany those two language lovers on their challenging journey and I wish more of us took care of the way we spell. Inspired by their quest I have also corrected a mistake I found in the office I work for. Somebody wrote down: This equipment must be switched not off! so I hurried to change the word order! It felt great! Thanks Jeff and Ben!
- Not Exactly What I Meant
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Grammar
Great typo hunt
Jeff Deck came across a ‘’no tresspassing sign’’ that has bothered him for years – double s in trespassing!
The sign had been taunting passers-by with that loathsome extra s for who knew how long. (…) I stared at that no trespassing, and I wondered: Could I be the one? What if I were to step forward and do something?
My favourite typo correction Jeff and Ben made was to do with my beloved type of typos and probably one of the most common ones – unnecessary apostrophe. I’ve written about it in the past but just a short reminder: we have an apostrophe when it’s a contraction – it is/it has but its as a possessive pronoun does not need an apostrophe. People argue back because possessives need apostrophes and that’s the rule, however, they forget that pronouns are the exception! They found an apostrophe on the sign where it didn’t belong but it had been written on the white board for so long that it wouldn’t wipe off so the lady came out, grabbed their marker and changed the apostrophe into a little star, then she added a couple more stars and it looked as if there never was to be an apostrophe.
Follow Jeff on Twitter @TEALJeffDeck and check out his website http://www.greattypohunt.com The book is definitely worth reading too. Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, says:
In this seriously funny – and seriously thoughtful – book, a simple typo hunt becomes something more: an investigation into the deeper mysteries of orthographical fallibility. To err is human; to correct, divine!
It was exciting to accompany those two language lovers on their challenging journey and I wish more of us took care of the way we spell. Inspired by their quest I have also corrected a mistake I found in the office I work for. Somebody wrote down: This equipment must be switched not off! so I hurried to change the word order! It felt great! Thanks Jeff and Ben!
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- Not Exactly What I Meant
We all make mistakes and it just so happens that some of those mistakes are truly hilarious. I think the funniest ones I come across are made by non-native English speakers, including me. When I first moved to the UK I must have been 18 or 19 and my English,...
- Evolution Of Spelling?
I got involved in an interesting discussion with @ciarancurran76 and @rougeit on Twitter which I’d like to share with you. I might be following it up with a longer article soon as well. Let me just add that both lovely gentlemen are totally worth following...
- Whom Confusion
Doing a Google site search of TripAdvisor the other day, I noticed that on the first search page for 'the person whom', this expression was used more often to refer to the subject than to the object, in other words incorrectly, in structures...
- A Ten-minute Walk, Ten Minutes' Walk - Expressions With Two Nouns
Expressions with two nouns to talk about time, distance and other forms of measurement Two basic patterns In this post we take a look at using expressions of time, distance, money etc when we use a number with a noun, before another noun, for...
- Fumbling About With The Style Rules Of English
These style rules come from a variety of sources, and have been adapted a bit by me. The principle with all of these rules is that each 'rule' contradicts itself. The original versions have been variously attributed to: The Fumblerules of Grammar...