Justice at the Museum!
Klamath, CA
I’d like to begin this entry by mentioning that Andrew Farago, the exhibition curator at the Cartoon Museum that I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, was gracious enough to have the errors in the Sex and Sensibility displays corrected already (or so I’ve been told– I haven’t seen the corrected versions). I believe that the messages sent to Mr. Farago by the good readers of TEAL encouraging those corrections played a major role in the swiftness of the action taken. Nice work, folks! And thank you very much to Mr. Farago for so speedily converting the museum to a typo-free zone.
Josh and I came home last night after failing to meet up with his friend, and it turned out that there was a little house party taking place upstairs, just like the night before. Hagar’s roommates were an eternally hearty bunch, it seemed. In fact, we’d noticed a lot of house parties in the neighborhood. Perhaps they are a staple of San Franciscan life. As Josh is always up for a party, he headed up to join the fun, but I had some writing to do. We took our leave of the city this morning, bracing for the longest drive of our TEAL journey. North of San Francisco, civilization drops out for a long while—until well past the Oregonian border, in fact. So we had a six-hour trip up to a hostel just outside the Redwood National Park.
We stopped after a couple of hours to grab food from a small deli in Ukiah. As I waited in line to pay, I noticed an error on one of their utensil buckets.
I pointed out the typo to the woman ringing up my sandwich order, and she was happy to allow me to fix it. Everyone working there was pretty nice, actually, and my sliced-chicken-and-gouda sandwich was delicious. Sometimes this road warrior thing isn’t so bad after all.
When we were about halfway up to Klamath, we had the opportunity to take a detour onto the Avenue of the Giants, which winds through lush forest with stands of soaring redwood trees lining both sides of the road. As there were no typos to find within the wilderness, I won’t take up much more space coughing out stale prose about it. Such words inadequately express the depth of my admiration for those woods, anyway.
At a certain latitude, maybe around Eureka, we experienced a dramatic change in the weather, as if we’d crossed some invisible Maginot line and were now subject to the institutionalized gloom of the Pacific Northwest. I hadn’t really had the chance to say a proper goodbye to California sunshine. It was good thing Josh had convinced me earlier to route through the Avenue of the Giants, for by the time we reached the actual Redwood National Park, it was a drizzly, dark evening, unsuitable for a hike into the forest.
We found our hostel by a remote and rocky shore. It was a cozy little place, but lacked internet access and cell phone reception, which is why you are only seeing this entry now. Really, though, April 13th is a state of mind, wouldn’t you agree?
Totals
Typos Found: 184
Typos Corrected: 111
April 14th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Hey, your parking garage correction has a mistake or two in it.
Original sign: “UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED AT OWNERS EXPENSE”
Your corrected version: “UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENSE”
N.B. The subject of the sentence is “vehicles” (plural). Presumably these illicit vehicles have multiple drivers, each of whom will pay for towing. Your sentence has multiple vehicles but a single liable owner. “Owner’s” might have been correct if the sentence had begun, “ANY UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLE [singular],” but it didn’t. Also note: if the scope of your work includes punctuation (as it appears), should you not add the sentence’s missing period?
Correct version: “UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED AT OWNERS’ EXPENSE.”
April 15th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Hey, Eureka… I was born there.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Sorry for the random pointless post. That’s what I get for posting when I’m exhausted and have a headache.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:03 am
What Judith said.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Omigod, “pastic spoons” just cracks me up. I think I’d have fallen on the floor giggling if I’d seen that in person!
April 16th, 2008 at 2:14 am
I would just like to tell Judith and all of her ilk:
The phrase ““UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED” could end there. But it doesn’t. The “Owner’s Expense” is correctly apostrophized since it is the expense of the owner that is singular. I hope that sufficiently fuels the fires of this debate for now.
And I am right, and you are wrong, and I am the one going around with Jeff fixing these darn typos. Muhahaha! Ain’t English grand?
END EVIL TIRADE.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:27 am
again…another towing sing.
how many is that now?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:58 am
NO, Josh! Plural vehicles, plural owners! Perhaps you will understand it better if you think of it this way: unauthorized vehicles will be towed at THEIR owners’ expense. Just because you’re arrogant doesn’t mean that you’re right. Now, get a clue, and some self-respect.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Given the nature of this blog, I presume you won’t mind being corrected on this: it’s Pietà, not Pieta.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Seraph, I do know that– the area of my ignorance is actually more related to how to make those damn accents in Wordpress. If you or anyone else have a tip about that, let me know… I’m sure it’s something simple I am overlooking.
April 17th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Curmudgeonly Yours et al. -
It seems to me that plural vehicles could indicate a single owner. What if I have two cars, and park them both there illegally? They are still going to charge me, the singular owner, with two tow charges. However, since there is no article in front of the possessive noun ‘owner’, it would seem to indicate that ‘owner’ is in the general plural noun form, as a general singular noun would take ‘a/an’ and a definite noun, whether singular or plural, would take ‘the’. Still, “towed at their owners’ expense” would be just as correct as “towed at its owner’s expense”.
As an aside, I did pull out Betty Azar, and she says ‘Thomas’ engine’ is just as correct as ‘Thomas’s engine’. If someone wants to take that up with her, I leave it to you.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
But it would never be correct for “unauthorized vehicles” to be associated with “its” as a possessive pronoun, and that is exactly what is implied by the signs in question. The originators of the signs most likely used “the” instead of a possessive pronoun because they were unsure of the correct construction and couldn’t be bothered to do any research. Ignorance, however, never justifies carelessness.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
THANK YOU for doing this! I live in Seattle so I’m sorry I missed you while you were here (but I wouldn’t have known about you at all if I hadn’t heard about your visit).
I have been known to refuse to eat at a restaurant that cannot spell “guacamole” correctly!
If you need anyone else on your team, let me know.