A local food retailer undergoing a major renovation apparently intended to plead for patience on a social media site, but wound up asking for participation in a nudist event. The retailer’s post asked customers to “please bare with us,” which is actually asking them to disrobe. Clearly (I hope), the store wanted customers to “bear” […]
Again and again, I see proof of professional reliance on spellcheckers instead of good old proofreading and editing. Case in point: a Northwest Indiana Times article about funding for safety improvements on the South Shore Railroad. The reporter included this bullet point: “Implementation of Positive Train Control, a federally mandated safety system that tracks the precise location […]
Whether mistakes are just amusing, horribly damaging, or simply embarrassing, they don’t belong in your marketing communications materials. That’s why proofreading is so important. That said, there’s a certain kind of error that proofreaders miss more often than any other … and it’s quite embarrassing (well, not as much as substituting a call-in sex line’s […]
It happens so often that I have trouble believing it. People inadvertently reveal a little more than they want us to know about them. They post a confession and an apology: “Sorry for the incontinence.” Sure, we know (or at least we hope) that they’re really not apologizing for bladder problems. We’re hoping they really […]
Many people confuse the plural and possessive forms of words, and I usually cut individuals some slack when they make the wrong choice. But when the world’s largest chain of ice cream shops does it in its advertising, I can’t let it go. This promotional piece for Baskin-Robbins suggests that we “Celebrate…The Holiday’s” with a […]
I’ve recently seen several mistakes involving the wrong word used in place of another that sounds identical, but is spelled differently and carries a vastly different meaning. An Indianapolis Star article about flooding had a caption that began “Storms dye down …” The writer meant to say “die down,” as in taper away, not “dye […]
Most people who insert foreign-language phrases and expressions into their materials do so because it makes them appear to be intelligent and sophisticated, n’est-ce pas? That is, it does unless they misspell the phrase or don’t really understand what it means. A particularly common error involves using the marvelous French word “voilà” (“behold” or “there […]
Many words that are similar carry very different meanings, but that doesn’t stop people from misusing them. Generally, they’ll accept a correction in the intended spirit, but that isn’t always the case. I remember one situation in which a client was so convinced that his misunderstanding was actually correct that I lost his business. He […]
Writers who are unfamiliar with a word shouldn’t use it … or should check with someone who knows it before they include it in a story. Ideally, an editor will spot a misuse and intervene. But neither of those things happened in a restaurant review in the March 22 edition of Nuvo, an Indianapolis newsweekly. […]
Maybe you think that those of us who call attention to typos and similar mistakes are being pedantic, or anal-retentive, just plain picky. If the meaning is conveyed, who cares about whether the words are spelled right or sentences are properly structured? Nobody, if it’s a comment about your Saturday night outing at the local […]
