Branching Out: Social Media for Publishers, Agents, and More

While you all know about my work as an editor with indie authors, you might not know that I have also worked with national marketing companies to ensure that their clients’ social media posts were error-free.

I see many posts from publishers, agents, a la carte author-assistance businesses (those who offer multiple services at various prices, sometimes as bundles), and so on, with errors that a simple proofreading could prevent.

Do you want your potential clients to see sloppy tweets or Facebook posts? What about your Instagram feed? Are those comments error-free and focused?

I’d love to help you up your social media game to the Flawless Level. Contact me at karen@grammargeddon.com and let’s discuss how to make that happen.

More information here: Social Media Proofreading

No guarantess

They're "captive," all right. This was on the back of the ladies' room toilet stall door. — They’re “captive,” all right. This was on the back of the ladies’ room toilet stall door.

The agency this poster promotes promises a “captive audience” for your advertisement. It’s one of those that specializes in pre-show theater ads, you see.

It does not, however, promise that all the words will be correctly spelled.

(This was the middle panel of a triptych. I saw nothing wrong on the other two. Perhaps I was too gobsmacked by this one to notice.)

In case you need another reason to mock Family Circus . . .

Here is the daily comic panel for October 11, 2013. I took a screenshot in case it’s revised and replaced anytime soon.

Do I need to point out the error (which appears twice)?

This comic was written, drawn, colored, lettered, checked (maybe?), and distributed. King Features Syndicate says that The Family Circus is one of the most widely syndicated comic panels in the world, appearing in more than 1,500 newspapers every day. You’d think there’d be a little quality control somewhere in that chain. Then again, this is The Family Circus, so maybe no one read it.

More ways to improve your enjoyment of this comic:

Dysfunctional Family Circus

Nietzsche Family Circus

The original comic appeared here. By the time you click the link, maybe they’ll have fixed the errors. Then again, this is The Family Circus, so . . . well, you know.

“Ex cathedral” is a great photo caption

This post could be subtitled “Know your Latin phrases.”

The correct phrase is ex cathedra, literally “from the chair.” The pope is said to speak ex cathedra, meaning he speaks with authority vested in him by virtue of his office. The phrase can be used for others as well; anyone who speaks from an authoritative position can be said to speak ex cathedra (even copyeditors).

Seeing this spelled with an -l is jarring, to say the least. As someone said to me when I mentioned it, “That’d make a great caption for a photo of a pile of rubble.”

Unintentional humor has it place, but I’m pretty sure the writer of this particular work wasn’t looking for a laugh. Oops.

I’d enjoy football more if teams had names like this.

Coincidence is a funny thing. The last typo shaming I posted here on the blog was about a big sign at a football stadium that misspelled that notoriously hard-to-master word, “welcome.”

Just a day later, a friend alerted me to another football-related typo. At first I didn’t believe her; the mistake seemed too ridiculous. I thought she’d fallen for Photoshoppery. But alas, it’s true.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish played a home game against the Temple Owls. As a treat for fans, Notre Dame made a souvenir soda cup with the team’s nickname emblazoned around the top.

Only someone transposed two letters, turning the team into the Fig Thing Irish.

Dennis Brown, spokesman for the university, said they weren’t going to blame anyone, and the cups would be fixed before the next home game.

I say leave them as is. Who wouldn’t want to watch the Fig Things take the field?

(Photo comes from here.)

You’re very weclome.

Last week (on September 9), the Houston Texans and the San Diego Chargers fought it out on Monday Night Football. The Texans were down for much of the game until they rallied to score a whole bunch of points* for a late comeback victory.

I’d like to think they were inspired by the sign that hung in Qualcomm Stadium, welcoming them to San Diego.

I mean, there’s just no way the Texans could let the bad spellers win. (Photo from here.)

If you’re going to make a mistake, make it a really big one that gets shown on TV and spread around the web, I always say.

* Yes, this is the technical term for it. Shut up.

If Cambridge University Press ain’t safe, ain’t nobody safe.

I’ve talked about this before in other venues, but this time I’m including photographic proof.

When as prestigious a company as Cambridge University Press releases a book — and not just any book, but a dictionary with a study guide — with an egregious typographical error, we can be assured that no one is safe from the threat.

Perfection in a finished written work is a lofty goal, and one that is not always (perhaps never) attainable. Still, we should work toward it whether we’re Cambridge University or Joe Blow.

“Saisfaction?” Really, Cambridge?

Here’s the cover. No typos here, though.

Memories stay (and so do typos)

“Moments Fade, But Memories Stay.” That’s the motto on the cover of the 2013 yearbook for Moorhead (Minnesota) High School.

True enough. In fact, students this year will have a special kind of memory.

The name of their school is misspelled on the cover of the yearbook. The cover says “Moorehead High School.” And Moorhead also happens to be the name of the town, so you’d think it would be the kind of word that’d be hard to get wrong.

Supposedly, the cover was checked by an adviser and several classes of students who worked on the yearbook. (A spokeswoman for the school district said they aren’t granting interviews with the unnamed adviser. I’d go into hiding, too.)

The district doesn’t have the money to reprint the yearbooks. Instead, they’re talking about putting a sticker over the error.

I like this quote from Moorhead junior Zach Ahrends: “[It’s] kind of sad they can’t spell our city’s name right.”

At least it will give the students something to write about in each other’s yearbooks when they get tired of 2 COOL 2 BE 4 GOTTEN.

(Thanks to this site for reporting on the story. That’s where the above photo comes from.)

FOUND: The Lost Chord, masquerading as a cord on a bus

I wrote a usage tip last week about “cord” and “chord.” One of the commenters, Miaka Kirino, told me of a sign on a bus window that misused “chord” and she was kind enough to snap a picture and post it over on G+. With her permission, here it is: a truly cringe-worthy typo in the wild.

CORD! CORD, you fool! — Bus window sign “Pull chord”

Typos 150 Yards Tall and other stories

There sure seem to be plenty of typos in the news lately. (Probably the Mayans again.)

First, a man in Washington state used his tractor to plow a marriage proposal into a field. The letters were 150 yards tall. He flew his girlfriend, Jody, up in a plane so she could see the popped question from above. Unfortunately, his tractor didn’t have a spellcheck—he had plowed the first letter of her name backward.

(The photo comes from this site; I added the arrow.)

Next, we have another entry in the Worst Possible Way to Misspell “Public” Sweepstakes. This one also comes from Washington state. (Something in the water?) The Washington Charter School Resource Center placed a newspaper ad to spotlight an upcoming conference. Neither the center nor the newspaper noticed that a crucial “L” was missing from the word “public.”

(The photo comes from this site. Interestingly, the story there links to a similar mishap that happened in May 2012, when the University of Texas handed out commencement programs to families of students graduating from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Yeah—you know what happened.)

Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs issues pubic typo correction

Longtime readers of this blog might remember a banner displayed at a football game that asked sponsors to “become a partner in pubic education.”

And finally, the Toronto Sun newspaper recently ran a correction notice to fix an error about whether teachers had been paid during a work stoppage. Unfortunately, they now need to run a correction about the correction.

(The photo comes from this site; I added the arrow.)

Is there a lesson to learn here? Maybe it’s just that no matter how bad your typo is, at least it’s not plowed into the ground 150 yards tall. Probably. I can’t vouch for all of you.

Grammargeddon!

Grammar's not the end of the world.

Category: Oops, that one got past us