No, your eyes do not deceive you; this is strike THREE for Dirty Harry’s.
Apparently running a business does not require the ability to distinguish between “to” and “too.” Once again, a lesson we all should have learned in first grade seems to have gone in one ear and out the other.
A couple of months ago I made a post after a friend sent me pictures of multiple typos she was finding while reading Stephen King’s The Stand. As it turns out, there were so many throughout the novel that she sent the book to me and suggested I read it and highlight the typos as I found them. When the book arrived in the mail, I got straight to work. Keep reading, I’ll eventually tell you how many mistakes I found.
I can’t refrain from mentioning the first typo can be found in the PREFACE of the novel. Sad.
I found countless typos scattered throughout the text, like “idca” and “kow,” but I also found a plethora of other errors: missing quotation marks (I can’t tell you how many times I thought a character was still speaking when, in actuality, the narrator had taken over) and other punctuation, improper plural agreement (“two woman,” for instance), and even the misspelling of a celebrity’s name (“Alex Trebeck,” although the Jeopardy host’s name does not have a c in it). What I’m trying to say is, this book is grammatical suicide.
What amazed me more than anything is that the editor didn’t catch that two of the characters’ names were each spelled two different ways at various points in the text. Rita Blakemoor was sometimes Rita Blakemore, and Mother Abagail was sometimes Mother Abigail. Oh, and here’s my proof:
I challenge anyone to find more typos and grammatical mistakes in a published novel than I found in this one (tisk tisk, Signet Publishing). And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to my final error count: 48. Forty-eight mistakes in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax. The part that makes me sick is someone was paid to edit the darn book. I won’t claim to be perfect by saying my count is 100% accurate; but I will claim with absolute certainty that, had I been in charge of editing the novel, I would not have overlooked that insane number of errors.
On the bright side, the story is excellent. I highly recommend it!
Just three days go by and I find another mistake on a Dirty Harry’s car wash sign.
The funniest part about this is that the second “too” is correct. How can you spell one of them correctly and completely ignore the other one?!
I found a drug test form that recommends you arrive with a “reasonable full bladder.” What’s a reasonable bladder? I imagine an unreasonable bladder is the type that, when it comes time to use the bathroom, suggests that you go skydiving with a hippopotamus or get married to a frying pan (or any other unreasonable activity). I imagine that a reasonable bladder, on the other hand, would simply just let you pee and move on with your day.
What I’m getting at, pretty much, is that this should say a “reasonably full bladder.”
From Cosmopolitan: the editor didn’t get the MESSAGE that the activity involving rubbing and kneading of the muscles is actually spelled massage.
I have no witty comments for this; instead, I can only laugh.
I’m still not quite sure what this notice is supposed to be saying. To the attention of parking customers? Or was “the” inserted accidentally? Or is this another example of an embarrassingly horrible foreign translation (like Engrish)?
Either way, it’s funny. And while I’ll admit I’m not sure of the “proper” rule here–as far as grammar is concerned–saying “benefits to” instead of “benefits of” just doesn’t sound right. Sounds more like an embarrassingly horrible foreign translation.
I went to the farmer’s market this morning and told my mom to help me look out for poor grammar on the signs. I may not have found anything there I wanted to buy, but I found a monster of a spelling mistake.
Sorry for the fuzziness of the picture (I was trying to be sneaky so I wouldn’t offend the lady running the booth). If you look closely, though, you’ll see the word “ecspecialy,” more commonly known as “especially” to spelling freaks like myself.
Grammaniac 