Spelling and Grammar at HBO

We enjoyed this column this morning:

Conglomerate, Spelt with a 'K'
by Lisa Johnson Mandell

HBO does it; Vanity Fair does it. Still, I could never bring myself to do it, even if you put a gun to my puppy’s head. We’re talking committing the heinous sin of the grammatical error, or the equally criminal offense of running something without having a sober editor take a look at it first.

I was horrified when I went to the HBO website on Monday, the 13th, to look up some details about that evening’s episode of Big Love. As someone who is quite familiar with the deep, down doctrine of Mormonism and its polygamous offshoots, I am stunned every week by the accuracy and thrilling cheek of the series, and I wanted to see if I could find out where the writers got their knowledge and nerve.

Right there, prominently featured on the HBO home page - in a box with a glowing picture of Ginnifer Goodwin, who plays Margene - is a sentence that reads (and I kid you not): “But how what does Margene feel when they run into a old acquantance?” There are so many things wrong with that sentence I don’t even know where to begin. If it doesn’t bother you, you might have a future as an HBO website editor.

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