I got this email recently. I, of course, checked the return address (which wasn’t Apple), but I already knew that because of all of the errors in one paragraph. It is pretty obviously either translated from a foreign language or a foreign country’s resident’s attempt at English. Whichever it was, I wasn’t fooled!
This was in the information for one of our rotating restaurants in my office building. I guess one out of three is better than three strikes and you’re out!
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:
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.
This was in a recent email I received. I understand it is hard to spell, but generally spell check will catch it or if there is any doubt, look it up!
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!
While dining at a fine establishment inside our local airport, I spotted this beauty. It is made worse by the correct spelling in the next item.
This is an example of words that are easily confused by spell check. The correct word here should be “participate,” not “participant.”
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.
This part of a menu from a local restaurant caught my eye because first, I love jalapenos so I notice those right away and, second, it is spelled differently in two places in the same paragraph. Worse yet, the second one is spelled so correctly it even includes the tilde.
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