Lufthansa - Nooooooo!
Please tell me I’m not alone on this one….
In the big scheme of things, with the economy going bonkers, the US election results (Woohoo!) and various other events unfolding on the world stage, what follows is an utterly inconsequential and unimportant footnote in a life of geekdom.
…. so here’s my confession – I absolutely and completely enjoy getting annoyed about what is excellently illustrated above on a tube advert I took an indignant snap of. It’s…
….BAD SPELLING ON MASS-PRINTED MEDIA!
Aarrrrrrrggghhhhhhhhh (sic) !
On my N95 phone, I appear to have many photos of these instances, just loitering around doing nothing – it’s about time this pointless bugbear was let loose on my blog.
- Bluewater – SHAME!
I feel I should qualify my rage somewhat:
1. It doesn’t sting quite as much when I see spelling mistakes in daily restaurant menus (Lemon Cak, anyone?) or handwritten stuff, or even blog posts – I’m aware of my own unreasonable nature in this case.
2. It’s (just about) OK when someone does unacceptable things with apostrophes at vegetable stalls – I grit my teeth, and buy my bag of potatoe’s’s.
3. When I’m travelling outside English-speaking countries, the odd printed mistake is no big deal, especially when one can probably understand the sentiment behind the spelling (“A Selection of Snakes and Desserts” in Egypt being a favourite) – indeed, if I was to attempt to write signs in Thai or Mandarin Chinese, I expect there to be more than a few spelling discrepancies, even after proper lessons – you get the idea.
However, <gets up on high horse> the cases that rattle me deeply are like the examples in the pics – they concern bad spelling from professionals who spell for a living and get paid for it!
SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!!! HIT SPELLCHECK!!!!!!
…even if the only person you appease is one short geek.
Reading this post back, I bet I *am* alone on this…. <sighs>
p.s. I am also prepared to bet there are loads of spelling and grammar errors in my blog, emails, websites, CDs and twitter posts – in fact, I’m quite aware that this is probably the case.
<climbs down from high horse>
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LJ Rich 
Is bad spelling to a person with perfect spelling as annoying as bad tuning to a person with perfect pitch?
…and the grammar is “suprisingly” poor too!
I quite enjoy spotting apostrophe mistakes. I’m with Lynne Truss and her army of vigilantes.
x
Yep for informal stuff the odd spelling/grammar mistake is fine.
However one thing in particular makes me wince… the abuse of “stood” and “sat”. Let the ranting commence!
Example of misuse: “The girl was stood on the floor.”
Unless somebody quite literally picked the girl up and placed her on the floor, then it should be “The girl was standing on the floor.” 😀
“The boy was sat in the chair” should just be “The boy sat…” or “was sitting.”
You hear this kind of thing so often (and from professionals who should know better!) Maybe I should lighten up but it really ruffles my feathers!
And afterall if you apply “is stood/was sat” to other verbs it shows just how funny it sounds…
“The girl was ran across the road.”
“The boy is ate the food.”
“The teacher was taught grammar to the kids.” 😉
…so I’m really puzzled how incorrect use of stood and sat ever came about.
Rant over!
I feel much better now, glad I finally got that off my chest. 😀
*pats high horse*
Lemon Cak? You mean there is some sort of wonderous animal that produces delicious lemon flavoured deserts from its rear end?
I’m sure that was very popular.
I agree with you LJ, its a bugbear of mine in professionals and companies spellwing[sic] words wrong, yes you can forgive the translations into english being wrongs, some are funny as hell!
But its when some should proof read first that its deplorable, they have no excuse in the media and conglomerate for example.
I personally in emails spell really bad, typing too quickly without looking at keyboard is my failure and in work the medical words are hard as hell to work out if spelling is right at times, but one thing that really gets me is tech words and companies being spelt wrong, eg…..
Athalon is common mis-spelling of Athlon the CPU
Maleware is used instead of Malware, ok maybe us males are the cause of Maleware!!! I own up its all my fault this maleware infestation ~:O)
Alwasy reminded by friend of mine of an email I sent to her once that she sent back the reply of “huh… what the hell did you say?” when I read it back it was like I’d typed in hieroglyphics, so had to send the decypher code to her ~;o)
Falls off high horse as its too HIGH! *thud* *ouch*
Ha ha! Lemon Cak is *still* funny!!
David, I think bad spelling creates adverse physical responses such as wincing in people who are sensitive to it, I wonder if it may be that those of us who hate bad spelling could have synaesthesia in varying degrees – the manifestation of a bad taste or sound as a result of, for example, the word “beanz” (Eeeeewwwwww!) tastes AWFUL.
Thanks everyone for diving in, it seems I am happily not alone after all. Now to get back on telly, see you there …
I agree with you LJ, it does produce wincing in me at times, weird thing is at times I’m just a bad in spelling! but if needed for professional purposes I do make sure my spelling is correct.
Small story from last month is that I was asked in work to proof read a medical research proposal, Ok I thought great its in my area of expertise.. oh how wrong was I, in the end I had to read 3 other medical papers to make sure that the words and context was correct in this one, took me three days!
Hahaha on Beanz.. damm hate them anyways! but I know where your coming from with that.
Did catch you on TV lastnight, weird must have built in tuning to when your on QVC (sparkily clothes but not overly so to enter into your post on “how to look good on tv” you got style), ok more so that I do try and catch the tech shows to see whats new and do enjoy the guests info on products, the Bose ones did in the end make me get some in ear Bose headphones for my iPod/iPhone, not cheap but well worth the price.
*went off on a tangent again sorry* bad trait of mine, picked up from doctors!
Why can’t they employ a proofie? I’m offering my services.
Wish I still had the photo of the huge National Theatre’s poster, “Watchthispace” [sic and sick!!!]
.. Madam Miaow, I walked past the other day, and it’s still up there!!! They have totally missed out the extra “s” and NOBODY CARES!!! Oh, the pain!
and yes, baked beans are repellent regardless of the spelling on the tin.
A variation on a theme here, but my personal bugbear is when First Capital Connect announces a late or delayed train. These days it has an automated announcement, telling us that First Capital Connect are sorry for any inconvenience caused…….
a) I bet the company isn’t sorry
b) It should be First Capital Connect is sorry
I thank you for providing a forum for my rant…
Hi David J,
My pleasure, rant has been duly approved 🙂