Wednesday, April 30, 2014

"The sign had been taunting passersby with that loathsome extra s for who knew how long.  It hung on a wooden fence around a vacant lot next to a dentist's office.  NO TRESSPASSING.  Sure, I'd noticed this sign before;  dozens of walks to Davis Square had occasioned dozens of silent fist-shakings at this very spot.  This time, though, the sign's offense struck deeper.  How many spelling mistakes had I noticed over the years in shop windows, street signs, menus, billboards, and other public venues?  Countless, I thought.  Not an enterance, NYC Pizza and Pasta at it's best!  Cappuchino!  Pistashio!  Get palm reading's here!  To/too, their/there/they're, and your/you're confusion, comma and apostrophe abuse, transpositions and omissions, and other sins against intelligibility too heinous to dwell on.  Each one on its own amounted to naught but a needle of irritation thrusting into my tender hide.  But together they constituted a larger problem, a social ill that cried out for justice.
For a champion, even."

~ Jeff Deck, THE GREAT TYPO HUNT / TWO FRIENDS CHANGING THE WORLD, ONE CORRECTION AT A TIME, Jeff Deck, Benjamin D. Herson, Crown Publishers, 2010.

Tomorrow:  Jeff sets out to "change the world, one correction at a time."

www.GreatTypoHunt.com