Speechless

We found this in a Jerusalem Post article about the grammar software called WhiteSmoke:

"WhiteSmoke is to text what a calculator is to math," she says.

It's an apt analogy; can you imagine trying to figure out how much to tip in a restaurant or a cab without a calculator? Course not; [THIS SEMICOLON SHOULD HAVE BEEN A COMMA] and users of WhiteSmoke say it's hard to imagine how they wrote business letters without the software as well.

People really think calculating a tip is unimaginable without the help of a calculator? Oy. We thought tip calculators were just a Seinfeld joke.

Still, we're not going to discard the analogy entirely. If people memorized basic math facts--and basic rules of grammar--then they could imagine functioning confidently in everyday tasks without technological assistance. Imagine how freeing that would be....

Too Sad for Words

Here's a holiday tragedy made slightly worse by the Vizzini in it:

Man arrested in fatal hit-and-run crash in Taunton, Mass.

TAUNTON, Mass. -- A New Bedford man who turned himself in to police faces charges in the hit-and-run death of a 13-year-old boy in Taunton.

The police said the victim was slowly peddling a bicycle along the side of Poole Street just after midnight Thursday when he was struck and killed by the 1995 Ford Explorer.

A friend who was on foot escaped injury and helped police identify the vehicle, which took off after the accident.

The police said 31-year-old Craig Bigos turned himself in about 14 hours later, after media outlets broadcast a description of the vehicle.

Bigos was scheduled to be arraigned today on charges of motor vehicle homicide, leaving the scene of an accident, operating to endanger and driving without a license.

The victim's name was not released, but Taunton Schools Superintendent Arthur Stellar said the boy attended Friedman Middle School, where he was a good student and very popular.

-- The Associated Press

It's pedaling, not peddling. One means to ride with feet; the other, to sell.

Thanks, Tasha R., for the find.

Spelling Tips for Textual Intercourse

We saw this in the Houston Chronicle and wanted to pass this along to all our single friends. It's no longer enough to be HWP NS/ND. Now, you must be able to spell to be spellbinding:

RELATIONSHIPS WITH WHIT: Dating while under in-text-ication
By WHITNEY CASEY
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

When a friend of mine left her marriage, she took the knives. She also took the crystal vase, the pictures and the kitschy set of cow-shaped salt and pepper shakers. But when her husband discovered that "she toke the William Sonoma copper sauce pan," well, that was the end.

At least that was what her ex wrote to her in a spate of e-mails itemizing exactly what was missing from their home (that she apparently took, err, "toke") upon their parting of ways.

My friend's ex-husband's spelling of took throughout the aforementioned e-mail spelled out something very clearly — they were not meant for each other. They were only married for a year. That was 10 years ago for her, but had it occurred today, all that misspelled e-mail would have "toke" place via texting.

A chef that's doneIt seems the single spelling gods must be laughing. My misspelling misadventures had just begun with that story. Fast forward a few years to New York where I dated a dashing and charming reality-show chef who sent out an invite to his 40th birthday reading: "Your invited to my ... " I then noticed a slew of his past text messages. There it was, an abundance of possessives where contractions were needed. In fact, he cooked up quite an alphabet soup of spelling with "your" and "you're" and "there," "their" and "they're." But it was the "to" that was too much to keep the two of us together.

Read more...

Whitney Casey's tips for textual intercourse:

• Your — possessive of you, e.g. your car, your dress, your spelling. (shorthand Ur)
• You're — Contraction of you are, e.g. You're happy. You're a bad speller. (shorthand U r)
• There — A place
• Their — Possessive showing ownership, e.g. their car, their dictionary
• They're — Contraction of they and are, e.g. They're not good spellers.
• To — A preposition links nouns, pronouns and other phrases to the sentence.
• Too — An adverb meaning also or excessively, e.g. too many misspellings.
• A lot — Two words, a and lot meaning many.
• Never end a sentence with the preposition at. "Where are you?" not "Where are you at?"
• And, of course, took is never spelled toke (unless you are doing just that — taking a toke!)
  
  

From the Irony Department

Sometimes, no further comment is necessary.

A Dictionary for Martha

'Tis no longer the season—or year—for Martha Stewart jokes, but she brought a bit of this on herself by describing what she did in the hoosegow:

Martha built nativity scene in prison
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The Christmas season brought Martha Stewart one fond memory of her stay in a West Virginia prison.

On the Christmas Day episode of her television show, Stewart showed off ornate clay forms of the baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, three camels and others she sculpted at a pottery class at the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, W.Va.

"Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month, and I was only there for five months, I begged because I said I was an expert potter - ceramicist actually - and could I please make the entire nativity scene," she said.

Her creations were all fired and glazed at the prison. She completed the effect with tiny artificial palm trees imported from Germany by a New Jersey distributor.

Stewart was imprisoned in 2005 for lying about her sale of ImClone stock.

It would have been fine for her to call herself a potter. "Ceramicist," though, isn't the preferred alternative. That would be "ceramist." Leave it to Martha Stewart to make things more complicated, though. For the record, her recipe for pear tart works just as well without the splash of $28/bottle pear brandy.

How Can Our Childrens Learn?

That's the question, when they get tests like these:

WASHINGTON -- Whoever created the practice take-home tests given to some elementary students this week could use some spelling lessons themselves.

Some parents noticed that the practice materials sent home with their children had spelling mistakes -- such as the word "device," mistakenly spelled with an "s" as "devise."

The name of a boy in a reading practice section was also spelled inconsistently. Gina Arlotto is the mother of a third-grader, and she called the blunders to the attention of administrators. Arlotto said her child was confused by the spelling differences.

Parents and teachers said that some teachers sent home notes pointing out the mistakes, and others said they were told to administer them anyway.

Arlotto said she got an e-mail from the new chief of teaching and learning for the school system, Sherry Ulery, apologizing and explaining that the original draft was sent to the printer instead of the final copy.

Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee wrote in an e-mail that this was a "significant problem" and that they'd "do better next time."

On the bright side, the school district did take responsibility for the errors.

Love Means Never Having to Be Grammatical

Sue has sent us a couple of howlers from a romance title she's been reading: SNOWBOUND WITH MR. RIGHT by Judy Christenberry.

On p. 96, [Hunter said,] "You know, when you're inside, you forget how cold it is out here." His breath stood out in the night air. [We've heard of bad breath. But breath so bad it stands all by itself? Gross!]

Later (p.147), Hunter and Sally were talking about the town Christmas Festival, and Hunter said he'd really enjoyed it. Part of Sally's response was, "There were several families who got toys for their children and clothes." [Those lucky toys, getting clothes.]

Emoticons: A Love Story

This week we've melted a bit for two sets of amusing emoticons: one sent by the wit Craig Conley; the other, discovered in our latest issue of The New Yorker.

Craig's submission, from Yankfansoxfan.typepad.com, is what he calls dingbats for dingbats. They're what logically follows the steroid-abuse denoting asterisk in the stats books:

Baseball's record books shall be besmirched no more. Or rather, the achievements therein shall be properly labeled. An asterisk for steroids. Yes. Of course. But how can that single dingbat suffice to explain away more than a century of exploitation, chicanery, and all-around evil doing? Fear not, fans of our Great Pastime, YFSF is here to supply you with a comprehensive system of annotation to illuminate the skeletal closets of the national game.

Henceforth:

* = Steroids
! = Amphetamines
$ = Gambling
= Cocaine
~ = Alcohol

More...

The New Yorker's list give us a useful shorthand for reporting news of the war in Iraq:

Emoticons During War Time

:-) No new attacks reported today.

:-( New attack reported today.

=:-)= This e-mail is being monitored by Uncle Sam for your protection.

More...

The Difference a Hyphen Makes

We found this headline in today's paper:

Arrest in student-porn actress' death

We're not porn conoisseurs, but we do not believe there is such a thing "student" porn. There are student teachers, yes. And there is amateur porn as well as professional porn. But student porn? We don't think so. Yet, this is what the hyphen indicates. When two words are linked by a hyphen, they modify the noun that follows. In this case, they imply she was an actress in student pornography.

The punctuation mark the editors should have used was the slash. She was both a student and a porn actress. A student/porn actress, if you will.

What a sad story.

Cousins, Don't Try This at Home!

Oops! Where was the copyeditor here? They're just lucky "geneology.com" isn't a porn site (whitehouse.com used to be--ewww).

Web post reunites cousins after 70 years
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. -- Two South Florida sisters are catching up with their Russian cousin after 70 years apart. Ossie Rasher, 81, and Sophia Altfeld, 78, last saw their cousin Rosalie Berkovich, 80, in 1937 when the sisters fled to the United States with their parents.

The families lost track of each other until decades later, when Berkovich's relatives tracked down the two sisters using a family tree posted on geneology.com.

Berkovich flew from her home in Acton, Mass., for a reunion Friday night at Altfeld's home in Coconut Creek. They are also planning for a larger family reunion.

For now, the three are catching up by exchanging family photos and stories of life journeys.

It's genealogy, people.