I found this on Etsy while I was looking for a gift. It was for sale. REALLY! This is the number one thing on Facebook that makes me crazy–particularly when looking at young peoples’ posts. I think only 1% of people under 20 (and a small number of people over 20) know the correct way to say “YOU’RE” when they mean “you are” rather than “YOUR” when they mean “belonging to you.” But now you know . . .
I caught this one driving by one of my favorites, Pita Jungle, recently. It’s a nice sign, except for the misspelling of “occasions.”
A friend sent this one to me. Headlines are what make readers want to read an article. A headline with TWO errors certainly does not entice me to read one. Headlines—and inside addresses in letters (including the “re:” line) and document headings and captions–are at least as important as the rest of the document and help a reader who is skimming your work decide if they want to spend the time actually reading some of it.
A friend sent this to me. Someone in her high school class recently found this while scanning their old yearbooks. She wonders how this error escaped the eagle eye of the faculty advisor (who was also the librarian).
A good friend asked if I would write on the use of foreign words/languages in English writing, particularly whether we should include the foreign characters, accent marks, etc. in our legal writings.
The basic answer is sometimes.
If a foreign word has become a part of the English language, like résumé, it does not need to be italicized. NOTE: I am using italics here just to emphasize the words I am talking about. Some words and phrases will retain the diacritical marks, such as the accent marks in résumé, vis-á-vis, and the circumflex in paper-mâche, but the words are not italicized.
According to The Bluebook A Uniform System of Citation, foreign words and phrases that are used often in legal writing and are familiar to the legal community are not italicized, but foreign words and phrases that are very long, obsolete, or uncommon Latin, should be italicized. For instance, do italicize:
But not:
Note, however, that id. is always italicized (including the period), but e.g. is only italicized when it is used as a signal as in See, e.g., Smith v. Brown. In re and ex rel. and other such procedural phrases are always italicized.
Avoid using Latin or other foreign words and phrases where it is not necessary and where an English word or phrase will work just as well and that will avoid the issue altogether, but when you do use them, if it is well known to the legal community or well integrated into the English language, retain its diacritical marks, but do not italicize.
I found this in a grocery store in Albuquerque. If I were to read this sign literally, I would see that it is $9.99 for the Cod Fillet’s 16 oz. bag, which sounds significantly overpriced unless it is a designer bag. And to warrant a sign, that Cod Fillet must have more bags than some of my friends do. I’m pretty sure they meant to say that the $9.99 was for a 16 oz. bag of cod fillets, but that’s not what it actually says.
My husband grilled pineapple for the first time this week and while he hated getting the pineapple ready, he loved the taste of it. To make the job easier next time, we ordered a pineapple corer/slicer from Amazon. It came today and I was looking at the packaging to try to figure out how it works. It is hard to figure that out because there are so many errors in the packaging. Then I had one more question–where are the periods? Hopefully the actual device works better than the company’s proofreader!
I caught this one on a trip back from Albuquerque recently. Even my grandchildren knew this was wrong (since they had to figure out why I had my phone out taking a picture in the middle of a store).
I spent a lot of time at Disneyland in the last month. I have a lot of respect for Disney and the way they operate the Parks. While I looked for signs with errors, I didn’t find anything in either Disneyland Park or California Adventure, so my dream job (wandering around Disneyland looking for grammar errors) was out the window. But in my second trip, while on a shuttle bus from a parking area to the Parks, my son caught this one. With apologies for the less-than-clear picture (it was taken through a dirty bus window), you should get the idea. In Disney’s defense, I was not near the sign, so was not able to confirm that the extra period was an error and not squashed bugs, so I’m going with an error–and an opportunity for my dream job!
This picture came from a recent trip to Albuquerque. While the sandwich sounds like it would be pretty good, I’m a little worried about whether they are trying to spell “sweat” or “sweet.”
Follow