Time to take another look at mistakes that wound up in print. Sometimes, I’m tempted to include gems from the Internet, but I don’t think it’s fair to poke fun at everyday folks, especially when they might be posting to Facebook from one of those smartphones with a touch-screen keyboard so small that it’s nearly impossible to get it right.
Professionals who should know better, on the other hand …
For example, there’s the Indiana School Boards Association. In a recent edition of its quarterly Journal, the association published an article that questioned the validity of the state’s school accountability measures. The headline for the article was “Education by Humiliation,” and I suspect its author may have been somewhat humiliated upon glancing up at the eyebrow that described that section of the Journal. It referenced “Eductaion Reform.”
And the folks at the American Automobile Association (what most of us know as AAA) seem to spend their holidays in unique ways. In the November/December issue of their Home & Away magazine, AAA lists many of their holiday favorites under a headline reading “Holiday Traditons.” Santa never brought me a traditon for Christmas; I never received so much as a tradipound.
Neither of these falls under the category of letting the spellchecker shoulder the load; both are simply examples of shoddy pruferedding.