I Love Editors

Whether they’re working for a newspaper, a publishing house, a book company, or something as simple a grading a million student-written essays, editors just rock my world. Seeing what someone thought to be their final draft just ripped to shreds with red ink all over the page somehow gloriously makes my day a little brighter. Maybe it’s the fact that no one ever sees them. They hide deep in the caves and dungeons of offices, keeping to themselves, making all the CEOs and writers and public speakers seem smarter, brighter and sharper.

They may live in the armpits of offices, but they’re apparently not a group to go down without a fight. When The Toronto Star announced several cutbacks earlier this week,  one such editor went to work on the memo announcing said changes.

Click through for the larger image.

Written by John Cruickshank, glorified to high Heaven likely by an underpaid editor.

From The Torontoist

The Day Is Young, The Store Is Open

As seen on St. Clair

Fettuccine lfredo

My sister noticed this on the menu at Pizza Hut this weekend. This sort of thing blows me away. Whether or not Pizza Hut is a franchise or a corporation… whoever was supposed to copy edit this menu did NOT earn his paycheque.

The "aIfredo" above isn't the same as the "lfredo" below, nor is it available in an individual portion size.

Slow, but not Retarded…

This sign makes me so furious every single time I see it that I finally stopped and took a picture of it. The real kicker is going to be when I’m old and in the way if I actually do get Alzheimers and I have reason to be sitting in that waiting room, and I don’t know that that goddamn sign is spelled wrong, and I’m OK with the fact that it’s still hanging there, mocking me in my ignorance.

Geriatric Assesment Clinic

UPDATE: (April 16, 2009) This is posted at the Oakville-Trafalgar Hospital, in the hallway just past the Outpatient check-in area. This photo was taken while I was facing south, with my back to this particular waiting room.

At Least They Tried

Please do no soak split peas. (Rinse before using)

Not All Journalists Went to Grade Four

Even when working for a national media corporation, some people, and editors, manage to overlook even the simplest of errors. The ‘poppy’s’ being written about didn’t own shit. They’re plants.

For more context, it’s an article about an old couple who were growing and cultivating more poppies for heroin than the United States has ever seen. 3670 plants were seized and the pair is being investigated. I might be the only person who finds it odd that the husband is 84, while the wife is hardly even 60.

As easy as it would be to judge their age difference, or their garden, maybe they are quite content with their choice of ‘job’, whereas this uncredited journalist may well be an idiot.

Read the original story here

It makes me angry.

I cannot believe the number of typographical errors I come across. People these days don’t care about spelling, and they don’t care if what they’re writing is understandable. Earlier today I refused to broadcast a 60-second news hit because it was missing an apostrophe. That, in itself, is not worth writing about, but anyone who went to grade four should really know basic grammar.

I used to think that people who didn’t know the difference between they’re, their, and there were idiots. Part of the reason I left university was the fact that I couldn’t justify the cost of the tuition when most of my (first year) classes were spent compiling grocery lists in my head while listening to a T.A. explain basic punctuation. I’ve come to realize that MOST people don’t have a firm grasp of English, and that many people don’t even know how to string a sentence together properly.

Even walking through Bloor West Village, I cringe at several (permanent) signs above the local, high-end businesses. There’s “Her’s Lingerie” and “Remedy’s RX Pharmacy”, just to name the 2 I can think of without much effort.

30 years ago, this kind of shit didn’t exist. No one had email, and no one had an instantaneous way of sending the entire office a nonsensical memo. I’m going to start posting EVERY stupid error I see, starting with Renée Zellweger: