Category Archives: misspellings

A friend sent this one to me. I hope you have had a giggle this week with my Christmas-themed Grammar Giggles! Thank you for another year for Proof That proofreading blog.

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This one made me laugh a little. The last person I want to repel is Santa! According to Dictionary.com, “repelling” means to “to drive or force back (an assailant, invader, etc.),” while “rappelling” (which I’m pretty sure is the word they were looking for) means “the act or method of moving down a steep incline or past an overhang by means of a double rope secured above and placed around the body, usually under the left thigh and over the right shoulder, and paid out gradually in the descent.” Also, I’m not quite sure why the headline says this is in Germany, but the next line says it is at a volcano in Mexico. Someone didn’t get their facts quite right.

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We will have a Christmas-themed Grammar Giggle every day this week. Hopefully, you will get a smile and learn something from them. So here is Day 1! I found this one in my email. This was so full of errors that it is obvious it isn’t from Wells FARGO, but is instead from another of those groups that attempt to get your personal information by sending emails that appear to be from legitimate companies. It might be easier for some of them if their grammar was better.

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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 proofthatblog@gmail.com.

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