3 Sources of Grammar Inspiration

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trees About once a week I amuse the grammar troops by torturing some aspect of the language in my writing. Hey, I don’t do it on purpose and I love that I’m able to provide an otherwise cuddly group of individuals with a steady flow of chuckles.

I’ve had this post in the back of my mind for some time, but I was prompted to write it today by a LinkedIn status update I saw yesterday. (Name of victim withheld) – “Excited to attend my first titter conference today.” In the always on, say what’s on your mind, send it, but you can’t take it back world we live in, we could all take a moment from LOLing. (This is not me throwing stones, I am definitely guilty.)

It’s funny how minor mistakes can slow down and even alter the meaning of something we write.

Here’s my A team, all-world, really bad typo story. I was working on an annual report for a very large non-profit agency. In the report there was a sentence that was to refer to the organization’s work and gifts on behalf of underserved families. However, the sentence actually spoke glowingly about their work and gifts given to undeserved families. Kind of different, oops.

I would love to hear your grammar and type horror stories. Seems like a good Friday outlet. Share them in the comments.

Here’s the list of resources I turn to whenever I get the urge to keep the grammar police at bay for a day.

Grammar Girl’s – Quick and Dirty Tips – Mignon Fogerty’s awesome podcast

Elements of Style – William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White – I like this illustrated version with Maira Kalman

Eats, Shoots & Leaves – The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

Image credit: Loopzilla

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Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 06, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing, Web Marketing | Tags: , Elements of Style, grammar girl, Lynn Truss

Comments

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Jeff

Good idea for a post. I've got one along the lines of the titter reference, and it was thankfully one I didn't have my hands on. One of my former agencies was producing a couple thousand press kits for a state tourism client. We had the idea of doing a die-cut rolodex card with the agency and client PR contacts. In spelling out the title of the agency contact, the "l" was left out in public relations, creating a new discipline "pubic relations." Very funny, but it also led to a costly reprint.

ducttape

I'll bet every PR firm in the world has come close to making that one. - I'll leave out the obvious puns about it being a hairy situation, ouch, couldn't stop myself.

Deborah H. French

As publications director for a PR firm I work with a number of public school districts for whom we produce a variety of print materials. Can't tell you how many times I've spotted the phrase "public schools" with the "l" missing from the first word. Oops. (Fortunately, in nearly 15 years, we've never had anything go to print with the error -- knock on wood!)

Judy Vorfeld

The error I find most frequently on the Web and in print is using "it's" (which means "it is") rather than "its."

ducttape

Probably the biggest one out there.

vandy

On the first anniversary of the opening of my husband's local food shop, we compiled and published a history of the shop. It included some great old photographs and interviews with a few elderly customers who remembered 'what it was like back then'.
Thankfully, Violet Nunn, who by virtue of a typo became Violent Nunn, was thankfully very understanding and saw the humour in it.

ducttape

I think she was my 3rd Grade teacher!

Deborah H. French

Ha... Didn't see the previous two comments until after posting; pretty funny that this one comes up in the first three posts. Another one I'm sure we've all seen is the misplaced modifier. I come across a lot like this: "A meeting of the board will be held on November 20 to address the problem of graffiti in Boardroom A." (Probably not what the writer meant to say, though I suppose those meetings do get awfully boring.)

elariviere

My favorite story has nothing to do with marketing or PR copy, but still makes me giggle.

My mother's first "real" job was as a typist with a major bank. Back then, typists worked on typewriters and did everything from transcribing to taking dictation.

As a bank is serious business, they took their copy very seriously. Everything the typists typed was carefully proofread by a darling elderly woman with a soft spot for her typist girls. Each error was circled in red ink, and a gentle note written next to it kindly describing the error, with helpful tips about proper uses of common words such as "its" vs. "it's".

My mother rarely had mistakes, but in this one instance, she made a very common error with the word "can't" by leaving out the apostrophe. Not so bad... except that she also mistyped the "a" as a "u".

The poor dear simply circled the error and returned the document without a word.

To this day, my mother is in stitches every time she tells the story.

Ps. There's a typo in your 5th paragraph. I believe you intended to write "typo" rather than "type" :)

ducttape

Yikes, what's with all the anatomical (sorta) mistakes - I'm going to move up the a PG blog today :)

Tim

Once, well working for a software company as a QA Tech, I was running reports on the system and sending those reports to the heads of various departments. One such report was a user count, and my typo was on the word count. The result was of course a terrible embarrassment, because that report went to the partners of the firm..thankfully, they found the humor in the clear typo.

ronratliff

My favorite was while I was serving as the CFO of a "Big-4" firm in Moscow, Russia. I was in the process of recruiting a new employee for the finance department and, although English proficiency was not a requirement, one young lady submitted a very good resume in English...with just one small problem.

For marital status, her resume read: "Celibate".

After sharing the resume with a fellow expat, he pulled out his "Webster's Dictionary" and, sure enough, one of the definitions for the word celibate is, indeed, "single".

I can't honestly recall....but I think she was hired!

Diane

I used to work as a tech writer, writing about ink jet "pens" for the assembly line. Several in our group recall with horror having items returned from the engineers having pointed out that they'd left out the space between "pen" and "is" in various sentences - "The pen is moved to the next station by..."

Name Debi Muncey

Sign posted in a Washington State Park:

Caution: Watch for Pedestrians on Bicycles

fergusdyersmith

great - My colleagues say that working with me over email and IM is like playing scrabble or the countdown conundrum - (i don't know whether they score each other points)

Katie, ATT Uverse Reviews

haha...nice post "titter conference" :D so far I have no embarrassing typo yet...but simple typos yes..once in awhile.

stevecunningham

John - I often get grammar comments on my posts/videos/emails. It's funny what some people will comment on, isn't it?

Thanks for the info and I'll see you on titter!

michellebarryfranco

I was teaching a college public speaking (ooh, re-check of this dangerous "public" word...) class. Snickers began throughout the room as we were heading into the bottom of page one of the syllabus. There, where it should have said "bring your outlines to class" I had left out the "cl" on class. You can imagine the classroom raucous laugh when I read that part out loud. The good news: I had another 35 students in the next class with whom I got to go through the same thing an hour later (syllabi were already printed.)

RedHotFranchises

A brief confession from my own past: In 5th grade, our teacher decided to teach everyone proper pluralization. Even then, at the tender age of 10, I felt like the work was "beneath" me which may be pretty egotistical. So, as she passed around a worksheet that contained words to be made plural, I conjured up new plurals of my own:

"Meese" for moose, "Cariboon" for caribou, and so on. I wound up with an F on the assignment, of course, but even in retrospect, the fun was worth it.

Deneen Wilson

Many years ago I worked for the State Pardons and Parole Board. My responsibility was to type profiles and investigative reports for each parolee. One day I was supposed to type "subject was laid off due to lack of work." However, what I typed was "subject was laid due to lack of work." Needless to say my co-workers never let me live this one down.

elainefogel

Hi, John. I am a collector - of bad grammar samples! No comic books, baseball cards or fine china, just a huge collection of boo-boos. It always amazes me how poorly the English language is used in places where you would expect more professionalism. I suppose it gives me fodder for my presentations and keynotes, one of which is on marketing boo-boos! :)

Marko Minka

Oops, it happens, of course. Truly enjoyed the post, specifically loved the term "LOLing". :-)

Rose

I wrote an editorial for the company newsletter of a mining company I worked for years ago. It was supposed to be a piece to boost employee morale (tough time for the company at that time). My boss edited the piece. Sadly, no one caught the missing "e" in every mention of the word "moral" :-(

Arp

How can one recommend "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" when the very title contains a massive punctuation error???

ducttape

Arp, it's a massive play on a common error - the book was and still is a perennial best seller, but you must have a sense of humor to read it.

grammar software

Hey, its Helping People Learn to Read and used

check out these grammar software

Regards,

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