Posted on 08/23/2008 9:57:59 AM PDT by Terriergal
PHOENIX —
When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense. Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.
Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park's Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.
Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them "a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Once upon a time that Classics Department of the local university created this poster which added captions to the painting “The Death of Socrates”. They were the usual stupid things, like “who’s the designated charioteer”? One of the posters ended up in my Latin classroom. A week later someone had crossed out all the captions in the word balloons and replaced them with authentic text, including Socrate’s last words from The Phaedo.
Just a thought.
Pensylvania? What in the heck is a Pensylvania? I'm driving to Philadelphia and engrave a new "N" in the Liberty Bell.
Do you know why I stopped you, sir?
There should be a comma both before and after the dependent clause in the last italicized sentence above. Although you inserted the last required comma, you failed to insert the first required comma.
I will let you off with a warning this time.
Do not let it happen again.
Good thing they didn’t get their hands on the Declaration of Independence.
But one thing that struck me: the author (forgot her name at the moment) got all bent out of shape about Warner Brothers "Two Weeks Notice", which didn't have an apostrophe (or it has one, but in the wrong spot). She kept carping on Warner Brothers.
I wanted to write to her to inform her that the legal name of the company is "Warner Bros." and that she should watch her punctuation.
I wonder what they would do if confronted by ... "crun-crun-chewey?"
I suspect something more at work here. Not too long ago, there was a controversy at the Grand Canyon over a sign with a religious reference, which a few self-righteously indignant atheists found to be intolerably oppressive, damaging their human rights almost beyond repair.
I believe the use of the word “but” causes an exemption from that rule. I MIGHT BE WRONG ON THAT but I don’t think so.... LOL
Doggone spell check and grammer police. LOL
Can I steal that badge? :)
"and they cannot wait to correct it once they see one."
Don't you just hate it when that happens? ;-)
Well, you asked for it. :-)
what would we do w/o PC people? :-)
:-)
I don’t mind them in colloquial communication so much, but I do ask for clarification if it causes confusion.
In fact I routinely use them to color my own speech/dialogue when writing.
For example, I See My Hands had suggested ‘uhh’ was a misspelling, whereas I was using two h’s deliberately to indicate the Obama-esque drawing out of the interjection.
I remember the first time I tried that in elementary school, to indicate someone speaking in the story (a small child) was incorrectly pronouncing a word.
One of my husband’s things is he constantly alternates between British and American spellings. I don’t mind that either.
However in official documents or signage or other scholarly types of prose (such as school or work reports and presentations) typos are an annoyance and people should really proofread themselves better — or ask someone else to. As far as British vs American spellings, sticking with one or the other would be better within a document. And actually it would be better to go with the country in which you are publishing the work.
That being said I try not to make as big a deal out of it as these folks did. I still sympathize. (or in Britain, I sympathise!)
She was an architecht and still couldn’t spell?
I still sympathize with them... doesn’t mean I would have done it. I just find the whole story silly.
The government doesn’t ever hand paint anything? It was made a park on Feb 26, 1919, long before the 1930’s watchtower was designed and built, or the sign painted. As such, it is government work. I hand painted a sign for our hometown one summer when I was in my late teens. If I had misspelled something I would have expected those that asked me to paint it to make me correct it before they put it up.
And of course, visual art and technical writing are a little different.
not yet!
But it was frustrating to be graded in school for something that didn’t matter wasn’t it? Or something the teacher continually screwed up on too?
I think that’s humorous.
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