Grammarians Gone Wild

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, pleaded guilty to vandalism after damaging an historic, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park. On March 28, they were accused of using a whiteout product and a permanent marker to deface a sign that's a National Historic Landmark.
Investigators learned of the vandalism from an Internet site operated by Deck on behalf of the Typo Eradication Advancement League, or TEAL.
According to the Internet posting, TEAL members correct typos on public signs. (The TEAL site is currently unavailable) Original and corrected signs are photographed and posted at the site. A detailed map tracks the progress of the grammar vigilantes' cross-country crusade.
In addition to being banned from national parks for a year, the two are barred from modifying any public signs and must pay restitution to repair the Grand Canyon sign. Read more...

Errors on public signs irritate me too, but I wouldn't deface a national monument in the name of good grammar. What kind of sentence includes being barred from modifying any public sign?

I have never experienced a 'whiteout emergency'; maybe I don't truly have a type-o personality.


Tags: [Jeff Deck] [Benjamin Herson]
[T.E.A.L.]
[Vandalism] [Good Grammar]
[Personality Types]

A Week in Pictures

Whitewalls on a Navigator?
A closer look indicates the driver needs to work on curbside parking.



I'm not making this up. Three of these decorations were for sale at a local store...each with the same spelling mistake.




Are Jake and Elwood in town?




Building Technology - Workers use large rocks to hold concrete in place in Cleveland.

Recent photos of those plants previously described as

nearly-dead	and dead
No flowers in the grass now	These purple flowers were transplanted from Sandra's garden

Read about the Recent Cleveland Trip

Tags: [Whitewall Tires] [The Blues Brothers]
[Construction at The Cleveland Clinic]
[Gardening]

Sign Of The Apostrophe

From this sign, I understand that a person named JOB is looking for work.

Suggested reading for the employment agency that posted this sign:

Tags [Outdoor Advertising]
[Look for a Job] [Punctuation]

Schools Advised to Reject Middle Class

Professor John White, a member of a committee established to advise on curriculum changes in the U.K., will explain the suggestion that 'middle class' academic subjects should be removed from the national curriculum in junior high schools.

Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are "middle-class" creations, the advisory panel concluded. Lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills.
Pupils would no longer study history, geography and science but learn skills such as energy-saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes.     ..the full article..
Energy conservation is a meaningful unit within a broader science course; ecology and conservation belong in geography; civic responsibility lessons are a by-product of studying history. It's necessary to understand how the past influences the present and predicts the future.

Available at chapters.indigo.ca

Geography, history, science and the arts are underfunded in education now - partly because funding levels consider student achievement on standardized tests. The standard tests focus on English and Math, yet an entire generation struggles with arithmetic, grammar, reading comprehension and writing. The panel's report claims that 'the aims [of changing the curriculum] include fostering a model pupil who "values personal relationships, is a responsible and caring citizen, is entrepreneurial, able to manage risk and committed to sustainable development".'

I support these goals, but I don't understand how removing social sciences is going to achieve them; however, I see there may be a buyer for my proposed course on Communication for Youth.

Among the units covered in my suggested class would be Communicating in Spontaneous Situations (Small Talk) and Conventions of Conversation.
The course would cover initiating, participating in and ending conversations. We'd discuss using humor, irony and sarcasm effectively, as well as the importance of thinking before speaking.

I can't decide if Communication for Youth will be a prerequisite or co-requisite of my proposed Common Sense 101.
I'll see what Professor White and his pals think.

Tags: [Prof. John White]  [Curriculum Review Committee]
["Middle Class" Subjects]
[Mark Bauerlein]  [The Dumbest Generation]

Histroic Mispelling For Sisters of Lorretto

New Mexico is unveiling its first Landmark for Women by honoring The Four Sisters of Loretto.
The Loretto Sisters were pioneers of education in New Mexico and started the first school for girls in the state.
Unfortunately, the historic plaque has been erected with several errors.
The plaque commemorates the Sisters of Lorreto, not Loretto; and uses know instead of known. Close ups ( in video) . The dedication ceremony is Saturday, Dec. 1 / 07.

San Francisco artist, Maria Alquilar knows the cost of public misspellings. "My career in public art is over," said the artist, after "Eistein", "Shakespere" and "Michaelangelo" appeared (along with 8 other spelling mistakes) in the mural she created for the Livermore Library. Alquilar said that she chose to leave the errors in her piece, claiming it was part of the art. Since her drawings show the correct spellings, I can't buy her 'art' theory.

How about the Ministry of Education report on school standards in The Isle of Wight? You know the one - it referred to The Isle of White throughout the document.


Tags: [Sisters of Loretto]  [Landmarks for Women]  [Santa Fe, NM]
[Maria Alquilar]  [Livermore Library]  [Education - Isle of Wight]

Research Triangle's Leading News Source?

I've been loosely following Tranzyme's clinical trials of TZP-101, a prokinetic drug that shows promise in treating gastroparesis. The headline of this announcement got my attention:

Perscription for Growth?
Tranzyme Closes on $20M in New Financing

The sub-headline announcement about securing $20 million in capital was lost to the error in the headline. Perscription?

It would be perjorative to say that the busy editor of the preceeding story is a little out of practise. Persuing corrections is the perogative of the editor.

A basic spell-check would've caught the mistake.

Tranzyme Initiates Phase II-b Testing of TZP in multinational clinical study.

Tags: [Tranzyme Pharma]   [Gastroparesis]   [TZP 101]
[WRAL]   [Research Triangle]

Redundant Conclusions of Texas Brief

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission's working group to analyze government reports has found, after an 18 month study, that Texas has too many reports.

The Commission's 668-page brief lists the unnecessary reports that are still prepared by staff even though there is no longer a need for the data. "Report 1473 calls upon the Department of Aging to prepare a report, although the Department of Aging no longer exists. There are still report requirements for the Human Rights Commission, which the Legislature abolished in 2003."

Records administrator Michael Heskett points to the trend toward transparency in government and more open administration to account for the duplication of information and the preparation of parallel write-ups in past history.

To save money and paper, the legislature and state agencies can't afford to postpone until later their cooperation together to ensure that each and every report prepared will be to the mutual benefit of both parties.

Tags: [Texas State Library & Archive]   [Michael Heskett]   [Texas Reports]
[Pleonasms]

Hyphens At-Risk

The most recent punctuation species to hit the endangered list: the hyphen.

The new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has new spellings of 16,000 words. Formerly-hyphenated words appear in this new edition as either compound nouns (pigeonhole) or two separate words (pot belly).

" 'People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.' "

Stevenson is quick to point out, however, that there is still a place for the hyphen in modern language - twenty-odd people came to the party; or was it twenty odd people?

In 2002, Florida candidate Patrick Feheley sued opponent Candice Brown-McElyea over a hyphen. He accused her of hyphenating her name to secure a better position on the ballot. Had she not changed her name prior to the election, Feheley's name would have been listed first on the ticket.

I never would have guessed that a gung-ho dictionary editor could be such a rabble-rouser.

There are a great many hyphens left in America. For my part, I think the most un-American thing in the world is a hyphen. —Woodrow Wilson, speech, 1919

Tags: [Short Oxford English Dictionary] [Angus Stevenson]
[Patrick Feheley] [Candice Brown-McElyea]
[The Hyphen] [Woodrow T. Wilson]

Fill Your Black Jack With Grog

September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

It started as a joke between friends John "Ol Chumbucket" Baur and Mark "Capn Slappy" Summers. The tradition gained notoriety after scallywag columnist Dave Barry heard about the tradition.

TLAPD boasts its own anthem. Tom Smith wrote and recorded
"Talk Like a Pirate Day"
(plays in Windows Media Player)

Need help finding your Pirat-titude? View the instructional video produced by Loading Ready Run.

And be havin' a good tide!

Tags:[Talk Like a Pirate Day]
[Dave Barry] [John Baur] [Mark Summers]
[Tom Smith] [Loading Ready Run Comedy]

Endangered Punctuation

Robert J. Samuelson's submission "The Sad Fate of the Comma" ,(Newsweek, July 23) caught my eye. Not just because of my interest in words, but because, about a month ago, I was involoved in a discussion about saving the comma from extinction.

What's wrong? You're looking at me like you've never discussed endangered punctuation around the dinner table before. Samuelson states "the comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. In text messages and e-mails, commas appear infrequently, and then often by accident (someone hits the wrong key)."

I believe that the overuse of the ellipsis ( ... or dot-dot-dot) in e-mail and text messages is partly to blame for the decline of the comma. The ellipsis gets tossed around indiscriminately. At this rate, we may, one day, face an international shortage of full-stop periods - the key component in an ellipsis.

Samuelson argues that the downturn in the comma market is social commentary:

The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don't have time for that. No pauses allowed.

We should have seen it coming. When writing dates, one comma did the work that it takes 2 slashes to pull off. We require numbers to have 5 digits, instead of 4, before inserting a comma (13,067 : 3067). At some point, separating adjectival clauses with a comma became an elective process; but doesn't a non-restrictive clause beg for a general rule?
(When did I begin holding the semi-colon in higher regard than the comma? The comma has 4 times the number of legitimate uses as the semi-colon!)

I, for one, am vowing here, beginning with this post, to preserve commas by using them more. In e-mail, I commit to using ellipses less often. Picture a life without full-stops It would become nearly impossible to identify the end of a complete thought On the other hand, it would make interrupting much easier

Commas used: 26

Tags: [Comma] [Ellipsis] [Semi-Colon]

[Newsweek] [Robert Samuelson]

[National Punctuation Day] (September 24)

It's Not Rocket Science

On August 7, 2007 NASA will launch its 22^nd mission to the International Space Station.

Space Shuttle Endeavour was rolled out of assembly to the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. NASA celebrated the arrival of Endeavour and welcomed visitors to KSC with a banner in front of the launchpad exclaiming

The problem is that "the orbiter is named after HM Bark Endeavour, the ship commanded by 18th century explorer James Cook; the name also honored Endeavour, the Command Module of Apollo 15. This is why the name is spelled in the British English manner." Read Shuttle's Name Misspelled . Endeavour's mission is expected to last 11 days.

That florist's window sign that offers
'HELLIUM BALOON ARRANGEMENTS'
doesn't seem so bad now.

Another CL Life Lesson Proven True: PDPS (Public Displays of Poor Spelling) are embarrassing and should be avoided. Ask any NASA engineer or scientist how he feels about PDPS; I'm sure you'll find he agrees.

Related Reading: Sadly Mistaken

Tags: [NASA] [Kennedy Space Center]
[Endeavor] [Endeavour]
[International Space Station]

[James Cook] [Commander Scott J. Kelly]

[Canadian Space Agency] [Richard Mastracchio]
[Dave Williams]

Word Processor

Words. I love them. Always have. It's not that I used to read the dictionary, but I am fascinated by words. We played word games in the car; our parents encouraged us to read and demonstrated an appreciation of language that we picked up.

Sometimes, from time to time, now and then, occasionally, at times I wish I'd never been given this thesaurus.

When I was young, we used to drive by a Realtor's sign with a word on it that was new and fresh. It was always exciting to discover a mint morpheme.
I wanted to know the word, use the word, be the word. Each time we passed the sign, I would silently work on the word. I wanted to surprise Mom by using it.

One day, we came around the curve and the rotating sign was facing us with the word. Sure that I had mastered it, I announced proudly, "We Are Yoo-ni-kyoo!"
"We are what?" Mom asked.

The sign was behind us now, but I repeated, "We are yoo-ni-kyoo." I explained about the sign at the office on the corner.

"Oh, I know that sign," Mom said. "It's yoo-neek. We are unique." She went on to explain it's meaning to me. For days, I strutted around showing off my new word. The importance of it was completely lost upon my 6-year old friends.

The point of this story is not to disclose OCD (again!) ... I got a tip to the site How Will You Be Defined in the Dictionary?

With very little else to do in these post-surgery days, I visited the site. I just knew that it would define me as a caring, honorable person of high intelligence and integrity. (OK, that high intelligence part of me recognizes that a java script random field generator is responsible for the answers, but a person can dream, can't they?)

Here's the result:

As Chris - [adjective]: Benevolent to a fault

As Christine - [noun]: A person of questionable sanity who starts their own cult

My friends call me Chris...benevolent, yes, but to a fault?