4.08.2008

ON THE ROAD LOOKING FOR TYPOS

From TheDartmouth:
"Jeff Deck is best described as a 'grammar vigilante.' Deck, armed with his 'typo correction kit' — which consists of permanent and dry-erase markers, several types of Wite-Out, chalk, pens and crayons — set off on an odyssey of typographical nit-picking to rectify grammatical injustices about one month ago.
"We're basically going around the country finding spelling and grammatical errors and attempting to fix them," Deck said. "Some of the things we find we’ll just fix on our own, but we find someone if we can and see if we can get their permission to fix it.
"Along the way, Deck and his various accomplices — collectively known as the Typo Elimination Advancement League — have recorded their adventures on the group’s web site. The site conveniently displays a hand-drawn map of the United States, with the group’s travel route represented by a series of connected dots that most recently stopped in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Each town has a blog entry with photos of comically inappropriate signs, and, if the group was successful, their subsequent corrections.
"Deck, who says he has always had a 'knack for spelling,' honed his skills as a former Opinion Editor and humor columnist for The Dartmouth, and as an editor for an academic publishing house in Washington, D.C.
"'About a year ago, I realized that I had never quite shaken my editor’s habits — I had internalized the Chicago Manual of Style,' Deck said. 'I realized I still had it with me, as well as my typo-spotting eye…and thought it would be a good thing to go around raising awareness.'"
"Over the course of the expedition, the group has encountered typos big and small, sometimes risking personal safety to correct grammatical mishaps.
"Deck’s journey will conclude when he arrives home in Massachusetts, at which point he will return to his apartment and “feel complete,” he said.
"In the end, though, the encounters with 'grocerry stores, US hellicopter helmets, [and] homemade deserts' have opened the public’s eyes to the problem of grammatical incorrectness."

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