It’s time for “Confusing Words of the Week” where I take a set of two or three words that get confused and give you definitions and try to give you a memory trick to help you remember when to use which word. If you have words that confuse you, use the Ask PTB tab on the website or send an email to [email protected] and they may appear here soon!
This week’s words are:
moot – debatable; disputed (as in a moot point)
John’s position on office vacations was a moot point.
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This was in my Facebook Marketplace recently. Not only is “dishwasher” different in each place it is used, but the picture is not even a dishwasher. It is definitely a washing machine . . . for clothes!
Proofreading is everyone’s responsibility. I wondered how often a judge actually makes an error. Unfortunately for judges, I’m pretty sure any error they make is immediately made known and picked up by every legal news source in the country. So be thankful that unless your error is egregious or it is a slow news day, it may not be spread so far and wide!
We’ll start with the U.S. Supreme Court and some examples of
errors made. Apparently, there is a website that publishes the corrections that
the U.S. Supreme Court has made to correct misspellings, wrong word choices,
missing words, and grammatical missteps in Supreme Court opinions. This term,
according to the National Law Journal in this
ABA Journal article and this
Above The Law article, they include:
The word “palate” in the phrase “painter’s
palate” was corrected to “palette” in a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas
in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
The phrase “lassez-faire” in an opinion by
Justice Stephen G. Breyer in Ohio v. American Express was corrected to
“laissez-faire.”
The word “against” was inserted after “protects”
in a sentence describing Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. The original
sentence in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision referred to “a law that
protects discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual
orientation.”
A problem with subject-verb agreement in a
concurrence by Justice Sonia Sotomayor was corrected in Hughes v. United
States. The first version of the opinion read, “The integrity and legitimacy
of our criminal justice system depends upon consistency.” The word “depend” was
substituted for “depends.”
“The Judicial Power of the United States” was
changed to “[t]he judicial Power of the United States” in Samuel Alito’s
dissent in Ortiz v. United States, since that’s how it’s written in original
Constitution.
In Jesner v. United States, Justice
Kennedy incorrectly described the facts of Filártiga v. Peña-Irala,
mixing Paraguay with Peru.
As much as Court watchers like to point out mistakes,
sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court stands by its choices. The word “miniscule” in
Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s dissent in Trump v. Hawaii was unchanged. Some
think the word should be “minuscule” while others disagree, saying that
“miniscule” isn’t the preferred word, but it’s not wrong.
In other courts, sometimes judges or law clerks insert reminders for things they need to follow up on and sometimes those reminders don’t get taken care of. The same can happen in any law office. This is one reason I try to highlight those notes as I see them so that as someone is scrolling through, at least it should make them slow down to see why something is highlighted. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel filed an opinion on a Motion to Dismiss with what Above the Law describes as “an uncomfortably honest assessment of the underlying research.”
Sometimes the error is not related to spelling or sentence construction, but is an error in numbers. Recently, an Oklahoma judge admitted that he made a $107 million math error in an order for Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million in the opioid epidemic. The portion of the award devoted to a treatment program for addicted babies should have been $107,683, but in the order said $107,683,000. What’s a few zeroes between friends, eh? The number will be changed in the next version of the order.
Just know that errors happen to everyone but good proofreading skills will hopefully make those errors less likely to happen.
I recently hit the jackpot on menu errors when I found three in the same menu. First, it appears they only offer you one brussel sprout and then they spell that wrong. It should be Brussels (named after the city of Brussels) sprout.
Then, they off a “blackend” shrimp risotto, even though they spelled it “blackened” in the description.
And finally, they offered the rainbow trout with “oyser” mushrooms. It should be “oyster” mushrooms.
It is never my intent to make fun of any establishment–just to use these errors to teach you something–so I have marked out the name of the restaurant. And regardless of the errors, the food was delicious!
Comments Off on Grammar Giggle – Oh What A Difference Punctuation Makes
A reader sent this picture to me from her local Wendy’s. Just looking at this sign, apparently, they have already filled all their positions because they WERE hiring, but now they’re not. If they are currently looking, it should be WE’RE (contraction for “we are”) hiring. Obviously, Wendy’s knows how to use apostrophes since it is part of their name.
This was a category in some education sessions I recently attended. The one thing going for it was that they were consistent. It was spelled “Begginer” throughout all the material. While I loved the categories so I knew if something would be too far above my head for me to learn anything, I also love when someone proofreads the material going out to attendees.
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