Guerrilla editing on the road
The Chicago Tribune has a fun story up about the Typo Eradication Advancement League. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson spent a few months traveling around the United States, finding and offering to correct mistakes (or, you know, mistake’s) wherever they found them.
Sometimes the people whose shopfronts were marred by these errors welcomed the correction; sometimes they rejected the interference. And sometimes the brave editors performed a bit of corrective graffiti even when they didn’t get permission to do so. One successful rescue began this way:
A block later, they stopped. Outside a clothing store, Deck noticed the lack of an apostrophe in the window type—it read “Women’s & Mens.” They entered, and two clerks with white-blond hair perked up.
“Hi, we’re driving around the country fixing typos,” Deck explained,* “and we noticed one side of your sign out front has an apostrophe and one doesn’t for some reason. So we were wondering if you have a spare apostrophe we could stick in there. Or I could just do it.”
“My, that’s specific,” the first clerk said.
“I’m not sure we keep spare apostrophes,” the other said.
* Really, what editor hasn’t wanted to say this at some point?
Check out the TEAL website for the complete record of the daring duo’s journey. (Spotted on Digg.)
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