Great typo hunt

Jeff Deck came across a ‘’no tresspassing sign’’ that has bothered him for years – double s in trespassing!

The sign had been taunting passers-by with that loathsome extra s for who knew how long. (…) I stared at that no trespassing, and I wondered: Could I be the one? What if I were to step forward and do something?

And so began the TEAL – Typo Eradication Advancement League. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson document their travels across America in their book - The Great Typo Hunt. Two friends changing the world. One correction at a time. Armed with markers, correcting typos they found wasn’t an easy task. People don’t always react positively to having their errors pointed out to them so our heroes needed to soften their approach as they can easily get into the very heart of somebody’s sense of worth sometimes. They couldn’t just say: you know what; you don’t know how to spell. It’s a natural reaction to get defensive when somebody points out your mistakes. They tried to be sensitive and approached people as courteously as possible and emphasised the fact that they were only going after the mistakes themselves and not the people who made them. They shifted their mission from not just correcting single errors to asking everybody to always have a second look as it is human to make mistakes.

My favourite typo correction Jeff and Ben made was to do with my beloved type of typos and probably one of the most common ones – unnecessary apostrophe. I’ve written about it in the past but just a short reminder: we have an apostrophe when it’s a contraction – it is/it has but its as a possessive pronoun does not need an apostrophe. People argue back because possessives need apostrophes and that’s the rule, however, they forget that pronouns are the exception! They found an apostrophe on the sign where it didn’t belong but it had been written on the white board for so long that it wouldn’t wipe off so the lady came out, grabbed their marker and changed the apostrophe into a little star, then she added a couple more stars and it looked as if there never was to be an apostrophe.

Follow Jeff on Twitter @TEALJeffDeck and check out his website http://www.greattypohunt.com The book is definitely worth reading too. Patricia T. O’Conner, author of Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, says:

In this seriously funny – and seriously thoughtful – book, a simple typo hunt becomes something more: an investigation into the deeper mysteries of orthographical fallibility. To err is human; to correct, divine!

It was exciting to accompany those two language lovers on their challenging journey and I wish more of us took care of the way we spell. Inspired by their quest I have also corrected a mistake I found in the office I work for. Somebody wrote down: This equipment must be switched not off! so I hurried to change the word order! It felt great! Thanks Jeff and Ben!

Avoid common mistakes in English - Part 2

Lurking from within Twitter a vicious little creature gazes into my eyes and provokes me to fight it. I have stumbled across him twice today already and many, many times in the past. The misuse of homonyms, my old friend whom I partially hate and partially await to see, almost expecting people to fire it at me. To read about homonyms look up one of my previous articles. One of numerous examples of homonyms are the words affect and effect. Even though they’re similar they carry different meanings.

Affect or Effect?
To affect is a verb and means to influence something or somebody. Effect is a noun which means something that was brought by a cause. A synonym for effect is result. Look at the following example:

Princess Diana's death affected me deeply or: Princess Diana’s death had a deep effect on me.

To effect on the other hand is a verb too although used rarely and means to accomplish something e.g. I’m trying to effect a change in the way we use English.

Two/to/too and There/their/they're
Other examples of homonyms are two/to/too and there/their/they're.Two is a quantifier and simply means 2. To is a preposition and toomeans as well as. Look at the following: I have two brothers who go to school and I go to school too. There indicates location, their means belonging to them and they’re stands for they are e.g. Their sandwiches are there and they’re going to eat them.