We're always a bit embarrassed at the paper when an error is made. When it's a grammar or word error, the copy editors among us are doubly chagrined.
But when I saw the letter about the "died-in-the-wool" Democrat, after I quit banging my head on the desk, I had to stifle a lot of laughter at the thoughts going through my head.
Perhaps a Democrat trampled to death in a sheep stampede? Or maybe strangled by the sweater his great-grammy knitted for him? Or mayhaps smothered by a pile of soaked woolen mittens at a kindergarten on a snowy winter day?
As if we didn't have enough to worry about with mixed metaphors and strangled similes, along come homophones to confuse matters even more.
You remember those from school, right? Words that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings, like "aye," "eye" and "I," have been confounding those learning English as a second language for years. Guess what, guys? They confound a lot of us native speakers as well. Add in homographs (same spelling but different meanings, such as "rose," the flower and "rose," past tense of rise), and our language seems to be one confusing mess.
But as far as I'm concerned, that still doesn't excuse use of "your" (meaning it belongs to you) when you mean "you're" (you are), or worse, using "you" for either one. C'mon people, give us word nerds something!
Though I'm not a total grammar geek, there are mistakes that make me cringe, such as using apostrophes to make a word plural. In only very rare circumstances is that acceptable, like when talking about your child's report card full of A's, and only because "As" is a word all its own. But mitten's? Washer's? No ... just no. There are businesses I can't in good conscience patronize because I don't trust myself not to take out the Sharpie in my bag and correct their signage.
Yes, I have a Sharpie with me most of the time. Sadly, I don't take my camera everywhere, so I've missed sharing some horribly written signs (such as the absolute most strangled spelling of "apologize" I've ever seen) on my blog.
In any case, though, I wouldn't take it as far as two Dartmouth graduates did a few years back.
In 2008, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson were banned from national parks for a year after they pleaded guilty to vandalizing a sign at the Desert View Watchtower in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The two used correction fluid and a marker to change a misplaced apostrophe and add a comma to a sign handpainted by the architect of the 1932 watchtower and several other Grand Canyon landmarks.
Deck and Herson were the founders of the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL), and spent March to May of 2008 on a "Typo Hunt Across America," correcting an estimated 230 typographical errors and blogging about their progress. Blogging about that Arizona sign, though, got them into hot water with the feds.
In addition to their year of probation, they also were levied a fine of $3,035 and banned from fixing public signs for a year. No matter; Deck and Herson got a book out of the ordeal, The Great Typo Hunt, published in 2010.
Now if sign painters will just make sure to have someone else check their work ...
It comes time for another reminder, especially in light of all the letters we've gotten about same-sex marriage.
The long-running rule on the Voices page is that we don't publish Bible verse citations (or those from other sacred texts), if just for the simple fact that this is not Sunday School, Bible Bowl or the Religion page. Including them is thus a quick way to ensure your letter ends up as a "no" if they can't be easily written around. We'll let you put in a short quote or paraphrase a verse, but chapter and verse citations won't make it in, which is how we also would handle passages from, for example, the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita.
We have to remember that this world is populated with people of many different religions, and no religion at all, and even among specific religions, there are numerous sects or denominations. My family, for example, is primarily Church of Christ or Baptist, but there are members who belong to other denominations, and at least one who is Buddhist.
On this page, we treat all religions, or lack thereof, the same, just as we do everything else. Which brings me to a complaint from a reader about another letter-writer's frequency on the page.
While I don't have the time to run down every letter ever run on the page, I can confidently assure you that no one has a letter published every 30 days. Al Case, specifically, has not been published every month, and at most has about eight letters printed a year, almost always responding to previous letters or stories. However, his name pops up in the archives quite frequently, but only because so many people feel the need to comment on his every letter since his beliefs (agnostic) differ from theirs.
Perhaps if we spent less time complaining about our differences, we'd notice more of our similarities.
Naw ... why would we want to get along?
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com.
Editorial on 06/25/2014