Grammarians gone wild!

ouyang · Post by **ouyang** » Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:37 pm

Prescriptivists unite! You have nothing to lose but your syntactic inhibitions. Vigilante grammarians are leading the way.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... vandalism/

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, or TEAL.

According to the Internet posting, TEAL members agreed to stamp out as many typos as they could find in public signage and other venues.

Federal prosecutors said Deck and Herson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to vandalize government property.

In addition to being banned from national parks for a year, the two are barred from modifying any public signs and must pay $3,035 to repair the Grand Canyon sign.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Aug 23, 2008 12:19 am

Language Log has picked up on this too, but provides greater detail (in the Comments at least):
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=522

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 5:34 am

At the risk of joining in on the side of the loons, do you think "typo" is really the word for these errors? Yes, yes, people do sometimes use the word that way, but not often I would think, and that usage defies the image that the word conjures up.

Anyway, if the roving vigilantes wrote google percentages of usage on the offending signs after our own fashion, would we give them a thumbs up?

I take it from the style employed that SteveJones123 is our own dear friend, getting a nod in the language log?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 9:09 am

I take it from the style employed that SteveJones123 is our own dear friend, getting a nod in the language log?

stevejones123 is the moniker I use to post in The Guardian. I'd registered as stevejones back in 1999 but had lost both the password and the email address I'd used to register. As I'd already bagged the name the Guardian software wouldn't let me re-register so I was obliged to add the numbers after the name. When I come to any site that doesn't let me register as stevejones or Stephen Jones then I use the stevejones123 moniker, so if you do a Google search for it you'll probably find mainly my postings. In a truly glorious act of shooting themselves in the foot the Guardian introduced software that doesn't allow a Google Search on comments, so if you are looking for ammunition to shoot me with you'll have to access my Guardian profile directly. I would have been the one that pointed the article out to Liberman, so he was probably returning the favour.

On Language Log I post as Stephen Jones. You'll find a dozen or so references to me in the articles. Not as many as to Chomsky but then I'm younger than he is

donnach · Post by **donnach** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 6:52 pm

Isn't it, over a certain amount of time, that typos and incorrect grammar aren't simply wrong but fall more into the category of historical evidence of how the language has evolved (albeit in reverse since the errors are what's being memorialized)? I tend to see old-tyme spelling errors and typos as folk-artsy and quaint and perhaps historical in some sense, but in exactly what sense I'm not sure.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Wed Sep 03, 2008 11:55 pm

A typo on a public sign would read "No Paking At Any Time" or something like that. It wouldn't be of great interest to historians of language, and I don't know why anyone would get their knickers in a twist about it.

As to grammar, public signs follow their own odd rules in any case.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 12:02 am

There would be a difference between deliberately using archaic forms or spellings for effect (to evoke the past), and making clear errors (on signs purporting to give historical information in modern English). I'm not entirely sure where the Colter sign sits on that cline.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Thu Sep 04, 2008 3:34 pm

English spelling was fairly well-codified by the end of Dryden's time, but it was not until the publication of Johnson's and Webster's dictionaries that there was a tool that allowed for total standardization.