Jeff Deck Travels Across the Country in Search of Typos.
They packed 48 pop tarts, sleeping bags and a tent in preparation for a quest that would eventually bring them from the Boston suburb of Somerville all the way to Los Angeles. They set up a blogging community so that friends and family could donate food and cheap housing. They organized all of this for the sole purpose of providing America with good grammar and punctuation.
In a brilliantly humorous blog titled “Typo Hunt Across America,” Jeff Deck, founder of the “Typo Eradication Advancement League,” led a coalition of the willing - men and women with enough free time to take pictures of comma splices. He explains that his calling couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment: “I’m two days away from my twenty-eighth birthday, perilously close to the time when one must Get One’s Shit Together once and for all. This could be the last opportunity I have both the time and the funds for such a ludicrous adventure, before I go and really wreck my career for good.”
Deck takes the liberty of correcting the errors himself - using white out, markers and stickers to copy edit road signs and ads. While visiting a miniature golf course in Charleston, Deck relates the difficulties of correcting a course instruction sign: “Various fiberglass animals and signs educated the miniature golf enthusiast on the inhabitants of darkest wilderness. One of which contained a minor but irksome omission (a comma was missing). The sign itself was protected by a layer of thick plastic, so we were forced to mark the plastic instead. The correction should withstand at least a few bouts of inclement weather before fading, and sometimes that, cherished reader, is all we can hope for in this madly transient world.”
You can read the rest at Jeff’s site. It had my fiancee, a copy editor at a daily newspaper, laughing at two in the morning.
About Jeff Deck (from the TEAL website): Jeff Deck has felt an incinerating passion for proper spelling and grammar from an early age. In sixth grade he placed third in the class spelling bee, a technicality preventing him from even higher rank. In both seventh and eighth grade he won the schoolwide spelling bee only to flub the district bee each time. However, a marble bust in the lobby of his junior high school still marks his achievements, depicting Deck in the style of a young Octavius, famed speller of ancient civilization. Subsequent stints as an editor in both the heady realm of college journalism and abstruse fields of academic literature have served to hone the eager blade that Deck wields against the hobgoblins of error and misunderstanding. He has founded the Typo Eradication Advancement League to further the just and noble cause of typo-slaying, in the hope that TEAL’s mission can be as a fat taper of inspiration in a dim and murky world.
Jeffrey Hill is News Editor for Access Intelligence, a business and technology information firm, web editor for Next American City and a freelance writer based in Washington D.C.
Fighting for Population
Robert Henning in Virginia on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 4:26am
I found a typo on Yahoo on an article from the associated press, right below where they posted your story! See below…
AP
Nike Unveils Olmpic Products
Tuesday April 8, 1:02 am ET
By Sarah Skidmore, Associated Press Writer
Nike Creates Products for All Olympic Sports in 2008
KONSTANTINOS VLAHOS in ATHENS GREECE on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 4:34am
I HAVE A QUESTION. CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHY THE ROAD SIGNS IN ATHENS GREECE (THE ONES WRITTEN IN ENGLISH) USE CH WHEREVER AN H SHOULD BE USED? FOR EXAMPLE MY LAST NAME IS VLAHOS AND THEY SPELL IT VLACHOS. OR THE ISLAND HIOS IS SPELLED CHIOS. TO ME THATS LIKE SAYING THE CHUDSON RIVER IN NEW YORK INSTEAD OF HUDSON. OR HARRY POTTER AS CHARRY POTTER AND SO ON. THIS ISSUE HAS BEEN DRIVING ME NUTS FOR YEARS. DO NOT GET ME WRONG IM NOT A GREAT SPELLER MYSELF BUT FOR SOME REASON I CANNOT STAND THAT. IN SCHOOL I REMEMBER THAT CH MADE TWO SOUNDS CH LIKE CHICKEN AND CH LIKE CHROME OR CHAOS. AM I NUTS???? WHAT WOULD HOME BE?? CHOME????
Alan G Thomson in Scotland , U.K. on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 5:16am
Ironic that an American feels that he is suitably qualified to correct the mis -spelling and grammatical errors in th U.S. Does this mean that the yanks will at last spell words like colour(color),tyre(tire),tonight(tonite) etc they way they are supposed to be,in the English language? If so then great,and not before time,maybe he can also preach proper pronunciation to those across the big pond who insist in pronouncing Edinburgh as if it was Edinborough! And all Scottish people’s pet hate, we and anything derived from our country is Scottish or Scots,and not Scotch! There is no such thing as Scotch whisky(n.b.not whiskey,even the Irish get this one wrong)as that would be like saying whisky whisky.You see Scotch is the word used outside the U.K. to describe whisky distilled in Scotland,and not an adjective to describe the type of whisky(that would be words like malt for example).After all how would you guys like to be called American yanks?And how crazy does it sound if you ask for a ham hamburger! see what I mean? Anyway thanks for giving me this opportunity to correct a nation’s grammatical assassination of the English language,but I fear whilst a worthwhile pastime ,it will probably be ignored or fall on deaf ears ,as we are doomed I am afraid to say to be 2 countries divided by a common language,and after all that’s what makes it interesting,isn’t it? What else would talk about if not our own deficiencies at trying to understand each other whilst supposedly talking the same common tongue, I know because we live next door to the English who find it hard to understand the Scots,God knows how they ever understood Robert Burns in his time! Hat’s off to Mr Drake for a noble exercise I wish you luck.
Tondizzle on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 5:31am
Ah, to be a part of the nation that improved the English language! Face it - when American English is spoken correctly, it sounds much better than its antique grandmother…
Fred Mount in Des Moines,IA 50315 on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 5:33am
Local Wendy’s on SW 9th Street in Des Moines has sign that reads, OPEN UNTIL 12AM. Shouldn’t it say, OPEN UNTIL 12 MIDNIGHT ?
Peter Danes in San Diego on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 6:02am
12 Midnight is redundant as well. AM and PM mean Ante Meridian and Post Meridian: before and after the midpoint of the day. There is no such thing as 12 AM or 12 PM. There is noon and midnight, all other 12-hour time designations may be before or after the midpoint, but 12 AM and 12 PM are the equivalent of saying midday before midday or midday after midday.
Anyway, a more sensible approach is to use the 24-hour designation. But that also has its share of illiterate users: the clock runs from 00:01 to 24:00. There is no such time as 00:00 or 24:30, even though you occasionally see that used as well.
Ambyr Knight in Rockton, IL on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 6:14am
Jeff - I say this to very few people - you are my hero! I am driven crazy by words that are spelled wrong. I’m a fairly good speller and have some grammatical knowledge. My family is full of great spellers, however I married into a family that really couldn’t care about things being spelled correctly or not. I won my school spelling bee in 8th grade and went on to regionals, in which my cousin was also a contestant, having won her school’s spelling bee. Every job I’ve ever had has made me somewhat of a proof-reader before things go out the door. Could it be that I care so much about spelling things correctly because my name is spelled so unusually?
Regardless, I have to tell you that mispelled words are so unprofessional to me, that I will no longer frequent any establishment or purchase any product that has words spelled incorrectly on their signs or advertisements. I will say that with all the mispelled words out there, it’s getting harder for me to find places to shop!
Wonder what the best (worst) sign is that I’ve seen? A sign on a car wash menu board (at a gas station) that read “Car Warsh Out of Order”. This was a chain gas station and because of this sign - I will run out of gas before I EVER even dream of going there.
When I saw your interview with ABC News online, you mentioned that correcting the spelling and grammar isn’t supposed to make people feel bad. I completely agree and understand what you mean. My only question is how you accomplish NOT making them feel bad. Perhaps it’s just me thinking the person feels bad, when they really don’t. I guess I still need to master this…
Good luck with the remainder of your trip and stay safe!
John Doe in Pontotoc, MS on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 7:11am
Actually, calling American yank is a big difference from American over here. Yanks are from the north. Actually, its a slight insult to call people from the south a yank.
Dave Steele on Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 9:40am
One of my personal favorites is a community center in West Milwaukee, a small industrial suburb located (as the name would suggest), west of Milwaukee.
The sign outside this building reads “West Milwaukee Community Centre,” but there’s an accent on the last “e.” So it reads like “Community Cent-RAY” .... I guess that makes it more exotic. Or something.
Lee Robson in Bristol on Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 8:09am
Re: Alan G Thomson’s comments:
I agree with your comments about Scotch, Alan. Being a lover of the marvellous fluid, I also get irked by the tendency to call it Scotch whisky. The unnecessary ‘e’ and insistence on ‘Edinborrow’ (not to mention ‘BirmingHAAM’) drive me mad too!
Alas, I cannot resist pointing out that it’s also ironic that your comment contains two typing errors and a wayward and unforgivable apostrophised plural!
I hope you forgive *my* pedantry!