Monthly Archives: August 2010

Friends have started sending me stories about the typo vigilantes, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, who have a book out, The Great Typo Hunt.

You may remember the Typo Eradication Advancement League from 2008. The pair went across the country, correcting typos without permission of whoever owned the sign or other item with the incorrect punctuation, spelling, or what have you. Jan Freeman, in a recent post about the book, recaps:

The three-month odyssey ended with a whimper, though, when the guys returned to Deck’s Somerville home to face a summons from the National Park Service: A sign they had corrected at the Grand Canyon was, it seemed, a 1932 hand-painted artifact, its mispunctuation protected by federal law. Deck and Herson could have gotten away with it — but they had posted the damning evidence on their own blog. Fined, muzzled, mocked in the media, and given a year’s probation, they closed the incriminating website and hunkered down.

They apparently didn’t hunker down for long, but they no longer make corrections without permission. And now they have a book. I haven’t read it, and I really have no interest. Last year, I was sent a copy of I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar — based on the Facebook group of the same name — and haven’t read that either.

John McIntrye wrote about Deck and Herson in 2008, and he put it perfectly when he said:

What is annoying about the whole enterprise is that it trivializes grammar, and reinforces the public image that people concerned about grammar and usage are (a) preoccupied with trifles and (b) busybodies whose joy in life is to correct other people publicly.

Think that isn’t the perception? Here’s something from a Philadelphia Inquirer story this week about the pair’s visit to the fair city of my birth:

Part classic road-trip narrative, buddy-love saga and state-of-the-nation survey, it’s also an adventure thriller for grammar fiends, travel porn for copy editors and other enforcers of linguistic propriety.

It’s not travel porn for me. My job as a copy editor when it comes to grammar, spelling, etc. is to ensure that my newspaper is free of errors and is written in a way that is not confusing to readers. We are a professional publication, and people are paying for a product they expect to be understandable and literate. Same with magazines and books. But I don’t care how you speak, and I don’t care what your sign says. I certainly notice mistakes outside of work, but I generally don’t point them out unless I’m trying to annoy my wife.

I’m a copy editor, not a language judge. I’ve seen people write that when they see a typo in a menu, it makes them not want to eat at the restaurant because a sloppy menu makes them wonder if the chef is as sloppy in the kitchen. Which is ridiculous. It would be like a chef saying he doesn’t want to read your newspaper because you can’t cook a decent omelette or you burned a cake.

The lead of the Inquirer story called the pair word nerds, a title I like to use for myself. And they are welcome to that. But like other kinds of nerds, it takes all kinds. Please don’t think we are all out there thinking ill of you if you mix up which and that.**

*Yes yes, that was on purpose.

**Did the sticklers among you catch what I did there?

A pub sign showing a niblick in Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland. From Brian Forbes' Flickr stream.

The OED had a good word of the day a few weeks ago: niblick. It sounded like a creature in a fairy tale to me. Alas, it is just a golf club. The definition:

• An iron (formerly wooden) golf club, originally one with a relatively short face and subsequently applied to most lofted irons with a heavy head, used especially for playing out of bunkers and rough ground. (Equivalent to a modern number 8 iron, 9 iron, or wedge.)

It’s origin is uncertain the OED said it could come from nib, since the clubs has a hooked appearance. For another theory, it  cites David Langdon’s 1975 book of golf terms, How to Talk Golf: “Niblick, old fashioned term for a No. 9 iron. Said to be a corruption of Scottish ‘neb laigh’, a broken nose, referring to the short club-face.”

When I was in New Orleans, I went to the National World War II museum with my dad and brothers. It’s a great place. I visited it with my dad in 2002 when it was the National D-Day Museum. It has since expanded, and one of the most interesting things that I saw this time was a copy of the draft of President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to Congress after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It is covered with editing marks, which is fascinating.

The most interesting edit is the first line, which originally read, “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in world history.” On the draft, “world history” is crossed out and replaced by “infamy.” It’s amazing how changing just two words can turn a flat line into one that echoes for generations.

I didn’t have my camera, so I took a picture with my phone. It’s hard to read, but you can see the editing marks:

I’ve been on vacation the past 10 days. My wife and I went to my cousin’s wedding in New Orleans and then spent a few days there with my parents and brothers. Then we flew to Philly to see her family. Toward the end of my trip, I knew that a bad day was coming. My best friend, Chris Jones, was killed in a car accident just after midnight on August 7, 2003. He was 19. These days the pain from that has mostly receded into some deep corner of my brain, but every time the anniversary comes around, and on his birthday in March, it comes out to twist a knife in my gut.

This year it came in the evening on Saturday. Lauren’s mom, uncle, cousin, sisters and brothers-in-law, our nieces, and my parents all were over at Lauren’s grandmom’s house for dinner. The party had mostly wound down, and the knife twisted all of a sudden. I was down for about an hour. Then this happened:

That’s my month-old niece, Zoe. As I said on Twitter later that night, it’s hard to stay depressed when you are rocking your baby niece to sleep. Thanks Zoe.

When Lauren and I were driving home from the airport yesterday, we listened to Bowling For Soup’s most recent album, Sorry for Partyin’. One of the songs, “Bfff,” is a great tribute to a guy’s best friend. (You can listen to Bfff on Bowling For Soup’s website.) It reminded me of all the trouble Chris and I got into in high school, and all the great times we had. And it made me laugh. Here’s the chorus:

You’ll tell the world I’m gay when you hear me say
that I really and truly feel this way
not that there’s anything wrong with being gay

And sometimes we punch each other in the face
like when I hit on your mom and got to second base
I’m trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.

Laughter through the tears. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, or any other afterlife, but I hope Chris knew I loved him in a heterosexual way.