Category Archives: legal proofreading

A reader sent me this from the Sports Illustrated website at the beginning of the college football season.

The SI story says it all:

“If Week 1 of the college football season has shown us anything, it’s that everyone has lots of room for improvement. That’s true for the players and coaches across the country, sure, but it’s also true for equipment managers everywhere.

Exhibit A: the season opener between No. 18 Iowa and No. 17 Indiana—or should I say, Indinia. Hoosiers running back David Holloman was given a jersey with a glaring spelling error, or perhaps some sort of misguided shoutout for Tony Award-winning actress Idina Menzel.”

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I borrowed this picture from one of my favorite “error zones,” CakeWrecks.com. I want to wish all my United States readers a very happy Thanksgiving this week. I am very thankful to all who read my blog, send me Grammar Giggles they spot out in their world, and encourage me to continue. Thank you!

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A friend sent me this breaking news alert from her phone. I’m pretty sure the suspect was “fleeing” the police. All the right letters were there, just not in the right order. Again, spell check would not catch this because “feeling” is a real word–just not the appropriate word in this context.

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This was a Facebook ad for a t-shirt. Of all the places to make a mistake, this is among the worst. If you want someone to buy what you’re selling, you should prove that you know what you’re doing. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen mistakes like this on t-shirts for sale. It is yet another example of spell check not catching the error because everything is spelled correctly.

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A reader sent this from an email that she had received from Thesaurus.com. It looks like they drafted the language as something like “you’ll want to treat yourself” and went in to change it to “you should treat yourself” but missed one of the edits to make that happen. This actually happens a lot in law firms. It’s another example of your brain knowing what it is supposed to say even if that is not what it actually says. If you need to, take a break from it and come back and read it again. Your eyes may connect to your brain to see what it actually says and make sure that’s what you mean it to say.

If you find something you want to share, send it to me at [email protected].

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Here is another picture from my recent trip to Chicago. This is a great example of knowing what it is supposed to say and not actually seeing what it says and also not reading all the way through something.

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I received this in a letter from my local utility company who was scheduled to do some work in my neighborhood. Again, “preform” is actually a word and not something that spell check will catch, but I’m pretty sure they meant “perform” maintenance. That is why it is important to actually read your work to make sure it says what it is supposed to say.

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I took this picture at a recent restaurant visit. I forgive the missing “i” in “Hiring” only because it looks like it slid down to the line below and the “h” is about to follow, but the misspelled version of “Servers” is too much for me. There are so many resources available that if you ever have a doubt whether a word is spelled correctly, look it up. You can go to dictionary.com and check there or just type the word into Google. It will only take a few seconds, but will give you the satisfaction of knowing your work is correct.

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This was an ad I recently received in the mail. It looks to me like this is an example of your brain knowing what it is supposed to say and tricking your eyes into seeing it that way. It might be better to have someone else look at it before it goes to press. If the three people mentioned in the ad all looked at it and didn’t see it, they need to slow down and really read it. Avoiding errors takes a little bit of extra time, but it is time well spent.

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