Carp Spelling

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>