A friend sent this to me and it highlights the danger of “replace all” in documents. It is much safer to search and replace and stop at each instance to verify that it is indeed the word that should be replaced. Otherwise, you will end up with things like this and in a legal document, that could be very bad. So be careful and take the extra time to view the replacements you’re making.
After a long hiatus where life and work keep getting in the way, I’m back with more Grammar Giggles and proofreading information.
The latest example of someone not paying attention was when a flight that we had booked last July for a cruise out of Athens, Greece, was changed by the airline. See the errors below:
For reference, our original flight was to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then on to Athens. And I’m not sure how they expected us to get from Athens, GREECE, to Athens, Illinois, on the return trip. This is a major airline and I will have a hard time having them near the top of my list for future flights. As I always say–slow down and pay attention. It will help get the details right.
I went to a craft fair this weekend and saw this bag. It made me chuckle because I could totally relate to having all kinds of stuff in my purse that wasn’t mine when my kids were little, and then I saw the misspelling.
A reader sent this to me. It clearly says that a “dog” is missing; however, they have a picture of a cat and the description is a “Tuxedo Cat,” which pretty clearly shows that it is actually a cat that is missing. I’m sorry their fur baby is missing, but it might help people find it if the sign were correct.
September 3rd marked the 10th anniversary of Proof That blog. It is sometimes hard to believe that there is enough new material to keep it going for ten years, but then it is really not that hard to believe. It’s also hard to believe there are people who are interested in proofreading and learning about common errors all these years later, so thank you for being one of them. I do appreciate every reader.
While we’re talking about anniversaries, here are some quick tips:
I encourage you all to go out and celebrate by correcting ten errors in someone’s writing today.
This Grammar Giggle is notice that sometimes I screw things up too. One of the Proof That Blog readers commented that there was an error in my last Grammar Giggle–Can We Bring Our Tobacco/E-Cigs and Pets or Not?–because I made a mistake in this comment:
The reader was correct. It should have been “none of those things ARE allowed.” I had even done a blog post on that very topic here and should know better, but it simply proves that I am human and do make mistakes. If you haven’t read that article, please click on the link because it goes into more detail. In a nutshell, because we were talking about a list of things, you could replace it with “not any of those things is allowed,” so it should be “none of those things are allowed.” If it was just talking about one thing, for instance, if it had said just “no purses allowed” and you could say “not one purse is allowed,” it would be “none is allowed.” This is confusing and can be difficult to figure out.
So thank you, Proof That Blog readers, for actually reading this blog and for letting me know when I’ve made a mistake so I can correct it.
This was in our local newspaper for our Hometown 4th of July Celebration. This is a great example of how important proofreading for content is. It isn’t always misspellings or misplaced commas that draw the wrong kind of attention to your writing, but unclear writing will do it too. In this example, they use the word “no” twice with things not to bring, but they don’t use it for the last two things. Does that mean that we CAN bring tobacco/e-cigs or pets? I’m pretty sure they meant to say that none of those things are allowed, but that’s not the way it came out. It would have been more clear to remove the second “no” and have the first one apply to everything on that line but it would have been even better to use the word “no” in front of each of those.
A friend who was looking for a new house recently sent this one to me. There are so many problems with this, but I wanted to point out the most egregious. In addition to the random capitalizations, random word separation, words that would pass spell check but are not the right word, and using numbers instead of letters, the correct word for the circled word below should be “immaculate.”
A local judge shared this Twitter post from a Florida judge. This perfectly illustrates a couple of points that I feel are most important in our jobs. First, proofreading is really important–spell check would not have caught this error. Second, taking the time to look at your work product is well worth it. Take the time! Third, this is a really good example of the usefulness of a master caption file for every case–that is proofread multiple times–that contains information that attorneys don’t typically review like the case name, court name, attorney ID, service list, and judge name. This judge seems to have a sense of humor, but I’m pretty sure she will remember this in this case and with this lawyer and firm in the future. Always follow Judge Weston’s advice and don’t forget to proofread!
A friend sent this to me from his news feed from a local news station. My favorite part is the comment. 🙂
Remember that “who’s” is the contraction for “who is,” which is not a replacement for “whose,” which is the possessive case for “who.” Here are some examples:
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