Readings, Rated
Emense Mistake
Genie posted a while back about Jeff Deck & Benjamin Herson, the typo vigilantes/grammar police/punctuation patrol (so many opportunities for creative headlines!) who were charging through the country correcting signage with sharpies & wite-out. When the pair visited Chicago, a few shops on Milwaukee Ave. were the recipients of their helpful handiwork, as noted in the Tribune article. But applying their strict standards to a historic marker in the Grand Canyon turned out to be illegal. Vigilantes became vandals, and now these two are on probation, must pay over $3000 to repair the sign, and are banned from national parks for a year.
This has been reported elsewhere, including the NYT (which referenced the Trib article), the London Times, and NPR, but I’m partial to this Bostonist post since it provides some relevant links, amusing speculation regarding the classroom conduct of Deck & Herson, and also turned me on to the addictive minutia of Language Log, which will now be vying with Bike Snob NYC for my blog attention. And then there are the comments, where you’ll find an expanded analysis of the issues at hand, as well as gleeful remarks on “asshat” usage.
Am I the only one who finds it amusing that people so intent on correcting others’ mistakes keep refering to these punctuation errors as “typos”? (Deck and Herson themselves do refer to them as typos). They would be typos if the people who commissioned the creation of the signs asked for the commas (or whatever correct punctuation was called for) to be inserted, and they were omitted by accident. Rather, these appear to have been either editorial decisions or the result of ignorance of punctuation. It looks like Deck and Herson might need an editor of their own!