Is this man mentally ill? Grammar Vigilantes banned from national parks Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson corrected the grammar in the first paragraph of this sign. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson corrected the grammar in the first paragraph of this sign. Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty August 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park's Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks. Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them "a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation." An affidavit by National Park Service agent Christopher A. Smith said investigators learned of the vandalism from an Internet site operated by Deck on behalf of the Typo Eradication Advancement League. Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson "discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors." The fiberboard sign has yellow lettering with a black background. Deck wrote that they used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with correction fluid and added a comma. The misspelled word "emense" was not fixed, Deck wrote, because "I was reluctant to disfigure the sign any further. ... Still, I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight." Deck and Herson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to vandalize government property. They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park or modify any public signs. They were also ordered to pay $3,035 to repair the watchtower sign.
On something of that age, with the historicity behind it, it's indefensible to "correct" it. OTH my local park has a sign stating that the public uses the equipment "at there own risk". Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! While we're on the subject: thread title Grammar Vigilates?!? For shame:spank: And (from an English perspective) the statement by one of the defendants: Surely that should be "mis-spelt". Aaaargh!!! (As a sufferrer of what Lynne Truss calls the "Seventh Sense" - we see punctuation/ grammatical/ spelling errors all the time) Tch, sneaky: you corrected the title...
I can't read the sign so I can't judge how much historicity it's got. What's indefensible is that it wasn't corrected in the first place. The defendants could make the point that after waiting patiently for sixty years somebody had to finally step in and do the government's job, and they should present a bill for... oh let's see, at the typical rate for government projects that would be about six thousand dollars. I don't know that abbreviation. State and federal agencies usually manage to proofread their signs, but municipalities, especially smaller ones, often don't have the staff to do it. I suppose we shouldn't complain, since the taxpayers would have to pay their salaries, but I will still complain that since the feel-good education revolution of the 1960s, a couple of generations of Americans who can't spell have been given passing grades in their English classes. Of course that is eclipsed by the statistic that the average university graduate today reads at what my generation called the sixth-grade level. And we all read at a higher level than we write! I fixed it. But it is more than a little ironic. Since I can't see the writing at this magnification, I'm left to wonder whether it was a grammar issue at all. The error they chose not to correct was in spelling and the one they did correct seems like it might have been in punctuation. The word "grammar" can be used rather loosely to encompass more than dangling participles and subject-verb disagreement, but I can't find a definition that includes issues unique to written language. That is British usage. (Not "English." Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland follow British standards and you can be sure a couple of those folks will jump in here to correct you.) Our dictionaries list "spelt" as a variant of "spelled," but they don't put the hyphen in "misspelt." They're everywhere. The signs in Spanish that are springing up all over the USA are forehead-slappers. They make random guesses about choosing between S and soft C. (Of course the Brits wouldn't have that problem since they all speak Castilian dialect.) I wonder if the French signs in Canada are just as bad.
OTH: My bad (aargh!); should have read OTOH. Hoist by my own petard in my rush to castigate Orleander. Er, wait, I'm English and live near Yorkshire, so it's On T'other Hand...Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I'm one of "those folk" and I'm English... (as implied) Usage again, I was taught that the double "s" could be misread... leading to "miss-pelt"
At least you got that right. Most Americans say "hoisted on." Of course we don't use "hoist" as the past tense of "to hoist." It's "hoisted." "Folk" is singular here: "a people." (Equivalent to German Volk.) In the plural it's just a folksy synonym for "people," or "my folks" meaning "my family" or small community. Since we don't pronounce or spell it that way there's no ambiguity over "Miss Pelled." Uh, I don't understand why reading it with the syllable break in the wrong place would be a problem. You'd pronounce it the same way, right?
Well technically yes, but only because I've studied phonetics. The P in pelt is aspirated because it's the first phoneme in the word, whereas the P in spelt is unaspirated. Most people don't hear the difference between allophones consciously, which is why they're not used as distinct phonemes. You have to make them hang a piece of tissue in front of their lips and say the two words so they can see the difference that the little puff of air makes. Even with all of my study, I still can't reliably hear the difference when Indians demonstrate B and BH. We don't even have the second sound as an allophone in English.
Did they "repair" it back to the original faulty writing, or did they correct it in the repaired version? Also, $3035 seems beyond stupid for fixing a hand-painted sign. For that price I would expect it write its message in the sky with lasers or something.
I think it shows a very strange kind of fixation. There are so many incredibly ugly signs - aesthetic crimes - that have correct grammar and spelling. To walk past these and deface the relatively subdued and quaint sign that did get their goat seems to indicate a kind of neurotic focus. These guys can't see the forest for the anxillary buds.
Naturally. Everyone else's hobby horse is a neurotic fixation, while your own is a mere quirk. It's the old irregular verb again: I am an individual He is eccentric They are raving loonies.
Being old or historical is no excuse for bad grammar or spelling. These signs are supposed to be educational, they are supposed to be an example for our children. We should pay these guys for their service.
If there really was some consensus outrage about the sign, they could put another sign next to it, a small one for children, where they are challenged to find the 2 or 3 errors. That's educational.
Well sure because although I am a grammar/ spelling/ punctuation nazi that isn't my particular "foible" Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Even though it is a different issue with Shakespeare - since 'emmense' was not the correct spelling then and a sign is generally a more restricted form of communication - I did immediately think of someone wanting to correct 'all the spelling and grammar errors in Shakespeare'. And given the fact that young people are forced to read (in school, no less) what might mishape their oh, so plastic brains - his plays - should we be a-twitter about that issue also?
