Tag: typos

Book Review: The Great Typo-Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson

Joe McVeighLeave a comment

Short review: tl;dr

Jeff Deck, an Ivy-league-educated middle-class white man, goes around the country to correct typos in everything from store signs to t-shirts to whatever else he comes across. He enlists friends (including his Ivy-league-educated co-author Benjamin D. Herson) who do not check him on his privilege, but rather enable him on his path to be as petty as possible. Deck and his friends learn little to nothing about language before, during or after their excursion. What could be a profound journey of discovery turns out to be nothing more than an aimless adventure of assholery. File this one under “Language books not worth reading”. Hunter S. Thompson would be pissed to know that these asshats stole the title of one of his books.

Continue reading “Book Review: The Great Typo-Hunt by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson” →

Casting the first ice pick

Joe McVeigh1 Comment

This tweet by Prof. Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School came across my feed last night.

Teachers, don’t make fun of your students. It’s not funny. It’s shitty.

Besides that, the distinction between its and it’s is so insignificant that only people who don’t know much about language would cling to it like it’s some ancient secret. Arguing about its/it’s (or picking on your students over it) is like arguing over who the best Robin was, Dick Grayson or Tim Drake*.

As it turns out, Ammon Shea (the author of Reading the OED, which you should totally read) did some digging and found out that Prof. Danny mistakenly used it’s for its in his dissertation. Because of course he did.

I wonder how he’d feel if his supervisor joked on twitter dot com about stabbing him with an icepick.

* If you didn’t get this reference, don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. Just like misusing its/it’s doesn’t matter. If you did get this reference, then you know the answer is Tim Drake**.

** Fight me.