Oh, the irony...

So I'm not sure what's funnier: The joke's punchline (this card opens up to reveal a picture of Dubya saying "How many is a Brazillian"?) or the fact that whoever created this card was mocking somebody else's stupidity, yet he couldn't figure out how to spell Brazilian properly. He misspelled it twice--once on the inside of the card, once on the outside. One l, dammit, not two!

I'm sorry, but *who* exactly resigned...?

This one's a pretty funny screw-up, but it requires some explanation. RANIELLE says: Portland's Mayor has been embroiled in some scandal about having a relationship with a kid who may or may not have been under 18 at the time. One of the local news channels that I follow on Twitter had this [above] to Tweet. ...What they meant was that the spokesman has resigned. But the Twitterverse nearly flipped out thinking that the Mayor had suddenly resigned. Good grammar in 140 characters or less might be tricky, but it's not impossible, folks.

Oh, I love it. Nothin' like a poorly-written/misleading sentence to induce panic in the Portland area...

Thanks, RANIELLE, for finding this one!

In case you guys need a fun little distraction...

It's Friday afternoon. If you're like me, you're probably all restless 'cause you just don't wanna be at work anymore. Here are a couple little treats to help get you through those draggin' Friday afternoon hours...

As a former Spelling Bee queen, I find this totally funny. Although if it had happened to me, it wouldn't have been funny at all. I'd have raised holy hell. (Hat tip to the HALL MONITOR!)

Red Pen, Inc. reader DANNY found a funny little song for you guys. Oh my god, you guys, look at this YouTube clip! If you've ever been aggravated by crappy writing on forums and message boards, you will dig this.

Have a grrrrreat weekend, everyone!

FOODIE FRIDAY for January 30, 2009

Oh my freakin' god. Red Pen, Inc. reader KIM found this fabulous mistake for us. She notes that "Williamses = Venus and Serena Williams. Mannings = Peyton and Eli Manning." And she's exactly right.

But the best part? The VERY best part? KIM also noticed that this mistake is on every package of the cookies! Bwahahahahaha! Oh, Oreo, where is your proofreader? Who let you guys get away with this insanely stupid and obvious error?

Also: Look in the upper left corner of this picture. What. The fuck. Is a lick-off? Is it just me, or does that sound obscene? And doesn't the picture of the Williamses and the Mannings with their tongues out also look kind of obscene?

Thanks, KIM, for spotting this! And now, let the dirty jokes begin. C'mon, you know you want to!

A whole mess of misspellings...

This picture comes to us from one of my favorite newly-discovered bloggers, J. Alfred Proofreader. I'm gonna ignore the fact that the person who wrote this steaming pile of poo clearly has never heard of capital letters. Or apostrophes. I'm just gonna focus on the spelling. Or the misspellings, as the case may be. I didn't even underline them all. My pen got tired, and my brain was quite close to exploding. This goober couldn't even spell Christmas correctly! But my favorite misspelling is scandle. I don't know why, but seeing scandal misspelled like that makes me giggle.

This dude also misspelled that Blagojevich dude's last name. If you find this sort of mistake amusing and want to see some other instances where Blagojevich's name has been butchered, make sure to visit J. Alfred Proofreader's site--he did an entire week-long feature on this!

Thanks, J. Alfred Proofreader, for sending in this picture!

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC FLIGHT 815... for January 29, 2009

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC 815 is the newest weekly feature on Red Pen, Inc. It's a combination of recapping last night's episode of Lost and mocking some Lost-related bad writing. We can only assume that the publications whose writing is featured here must have had copy editors aboard Oceanic 815, and once the plane crashed and the copy editors died, the cheap-ass publications didn't hire anyone else to replace them...which results in the crappy writing/grammar/spelling found in this feature.

Thanks to fellow Lostie MAGGIE for finding this picture for us! Not only can that writer not spell survivor properly, but it's like he's playing the "How many different ways can I misspell Daniel Faraday's name?" (Answer: Precisely 2.)

Now on to the Lost recap. WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

(Also, don't forget to check out Doc Jensen's thoughts on Jughead!)

Was anyone else getting sort of, um, lost in this episode? My head was spinning by the time 10:00 rolled around. To sit there and watch Locke approach Richard to tell Richard that they've actually already met, but in the future, and then to find out it's 1954, and John wasn't even born until 1956, and then there's another freakin' flash and all the others go away... My pretty little brain was a wee bit overloaded, to say the least.

OK, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll begin at the beginning. Holy shit, Desmond and Penny have a kid. And that kid is named Charlie. I thought that was very touching. And then Desmond (who looked totally, ridiculously, jaw-droppingly hot in this episode. His hair looked hot, his outfit was quite dapper, and his accent is to die for. Desmond can be my constant anytime!) runs off to try to find Faraday's mother. Instead he finds Faraday's little lair, and then goes to see who I'm guessing is Daniel's former ladyfriend, who--from the looks of her--I'm thinking had one too many experiments done on her poor little brain. And then we happen to find out that Charles Widmore is the person who's been funding Faraday's research. And then Desmond barrels on in to Widmore's office to find out where Faraday's mother is. She's in LA, which makes me really strongly suspect that she is the woman Ben's been dealing with in LA. And then Desmond lies to Penny about Faraday's mother, saying she's dead (why exactly did he lie?), and Penny sees through the lie and now she wants to go with him to find her...

Meanwhile, on the island, Sawyer/Juliet/Locke have managed to catch 2 of the guys in uniform, who are apparently Others...from a loooong time ago. Juliet recognizes this because she hears them speaking Latin. She starts speaking Latin to them, completely befuddling the hotness that is Sawyer, and she tells these guys she wants to see Richard Alpert. They looked pretty stunned. And while all this is going on, Faraday/Charlotte/Miles have gotten themselves captured by these Others and hauled back to the Others' camp. Faraday claims he's in love with Charlotte and takes on the daunting task of attempting to disable a big-ass hydrogen bomb, labeled Jughead, that's hangin' out in a wooden frame in a field. The chick who escorts Faraday to the bomb looks eerily reminiscent of Faraday's ladyfriend that Desmond saw when he was in Oxford. Faraday's trying to convince this chick to let him seal up the bomb (which is leaking) and then bury it. She was having an awfully difficult time wrapping her head around the fact that the reason he knew it would be OK if they buried it is because he knew that the island was OK 50 years in the future and that the bomb hadn't blown it up; therefore it must be OK to bury it now. Sawyer and Juliet come out of the woods, thinking that the chick escorting Faraday to the bomb is actually escorting him to his death, so they surround her... Which is about the same time that (as mentioned above) Locke's talking to Richard...(and guess who's there when the two of them are talking? A younger version of...Charles Widmore!). And then there's a flash, and it's just Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Charlotte, and Faraday...

And Charlotte is bleeding from the nose. Profusely. And convulsing. Time-travel sickness. Faraday runs to comfort her, and...the episode ends. BASTARDS.

So, dear readers...do you think Charlotte's gonna make it? Did you notice any other pertinent details, and/or do you have any different interpretations of the episode? And the most important thing to ponder... Who looked hotter in this episode--Desmond or Sawyer? (For once, my vote is...*gasp*...not Sawyer!) Weigh in below, in the comments!

This is exactly why proofreaders are so damn necessary.

So JANE, who runs the amusing blog WOPSUT.com, sent in this picture. Well, here's the thing. She actually sent three pictures. I got through approximately one-third of them. Jane feared that they'd send me into a grammar coma...and she was right!

Jane notes that she thinks they must have used voice recognition software to transcribe this interview, and I'm inclined to believe that theory; that'd make sense. But just because you have some sort of computer thingy figuring out what a human being said does not mean you should forget to run it past a human being before posting it on the web. Eeeek.

Thanks, JANE, for sending in this picture!

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for January 28, 2009

Just a heads-up--this one might be a little gross (in a TMI sort of way) for the guys out there. I see that there are some icky topics like cervical mucous (ew!) discussed in the picture above...so you've been warned!

MAGGIE, our fabulous goddess of gossip, is the second RPI reader to ever be brave enough to submit a Hump Day Grammar post. This one's pretty funny, too...it looks like the writer got obtaining and abstaining mixed up. (Yeah, because abstaining from sex and obtaining sex are so easily confused...riiiiiight...)

Thanks to MAGGIE for spotting this one! Happy Hump Day to everyone...I hope you get to obtain instead of abstain! ;)

A ridiculous misspelling...

How many times do I have to mention that this word should be spelled ridiculous? The only way that rediculous could ever be a word is if something was diculous* once and then was diculous again. That would be rediculous...right? Sigh.

Thanks to DAVE for finding this mistake. It has something to do with Fallout 3, this video game that apparently he's really good at (the game looks way too complicated for little ol' me...although my video game knowledge and abilities are limited and I can't decently play anything more advanced than Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, 3, or Super Mario World, please know that I am crazy good at those games and could kick your ass at them no matter how sober or drunk I might be. Just sayin').

And on a semi-related note...happy, happy, happy birthday to Dave! (I hope it's a great day and that you aren't stuck at work all night!)

* Diculous is totally not even a word. Obviously.

THE GRAMMARPHILE TURNS 28!

So I'm officially 28 today, which is kinda hilarious since I look young enough that I still get carded, yet my poor little over-stressed brain somehow feels way older than just 28 years.

Thank you sooooo much to everyone who sent in gifts of bad grammar--you'll see your pictures and submissions popping up over the next couple of weeks! :) And special thanks to Mama and Papa Grammarphile, who are giving me the best birthday gift EVER--the gift of BILFs! *squeal* (They're giving me an MLB.com subscription and baseball tickets to see some of my favorite baseball teams so that I can watch insanely hot baseball players all season long. Which means that, come April, I may never leave my house again--at least until the end of October--unless I'm going to an actual ballpark. Why the hell would I walk away from my computer when I could be watching hot ballplayers on the Phillies, Twins, Rays, Rangers, Braves, etc?)

One thing that happens to everyone at age 28 is that you're apparently in your Saturn Return phase...which is a time when Saturn helps you sort of push out the crap in your life that you shouldn't be doing and directs you toward your more important life goals. This bodes well for me in a way, as I'm certain that during my Saturn Return I'll finally have my novel finished (and then hopefully published), but it might also make me even more of a goofy, eccentric writer...so watch out! You've been warned. ;) The above picture was taken from a web site that explains the concept of Saturn Return. I think they meant to write sync in that second paragraph...I don't know what the hell "sinq" is (besides a silly spelling error, of course!).

OK, I'm gonna go enjoy my 28th birthday now by...going to work. Sigh. Do not want!

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for January 27, 2009

ChicagoLady sent in this amusing example of weak (not to be confused with week!) grammar skills. Apparently the person who wrote this forum post is an American Idol fan. You know what would be awesome? Running, like, Hooked on Phonics commercials during American Idol. Couldn't hurt, right?

Gracias to ChicagoLady for this one!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for January 26, 2009 (post 1 of 2)

My buddy CLAY sent me this sign. It was sent to him by one of his friends, and apparently his friend spotted this sign in the parking lot of the office in which he works. The really funny thing is that Clay's friend's office happens to be a certain news organization whose website is rife with spelling and grammar mistakes...in fact, they make so many mistakes on that website that I check the site several times daily just to see what headlines they're screwing up that might provide good entertainment for all you loyal Red Pen, Inc. readers.

I suppose if they're constantly effin' up the grammar and spelling on this very well-respected news website, I shouldn't be surprised that there's a misspelling on a sign they put in their parking lot. Figures, right?

Thanks, CLAY, for sending in this amusing picture!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for January 26, 2009 (post 2 of 2)

Finding misspellings on the site from which this one came is like shooting fish in a barrel. I normally don't swipe this type of stuff from the blogger I've nicknamed the Queen of All Misspellings (because it really is too easy, which kinda makes it boring), but I thought this one was funny. Mainly because every time I read over the headline, I get that really annoying Salt n' Pepa song, "Shoop," stuck in my head, and it makes me giggle like crazy.

Misspellings make me wanna shoop. Or something like that.

Ironic FAIL.

New Red Pen, Inc. reader BRIDGETE says: This appeared in an ongoing questionnaire application on Facebook. Although I couldn't find a submission link, I think there must be some way to submit questions. The errors were too sporadic for there to be just one author. Anyway, this was one of my favorites. I just love the irony.

Ahhh, Facebook...a breeding ground for illiteracy. I'm betting the person writing the questionnaire doesn't have a degree themselves--well, at least not in English...

Thanks to BRIDGETE for finding this one!

Shakespeare's probably rolling over in his grave.

RANIELLE makes a very good point--she says: People who shouldn't get paid to write: Those who flagrantly misuse the word "wherefore" in their headlines. I concur!

This is just a mini-rant on this error. For a bigger, better rant, visit John August's site.

Thanks for spotting this one, RANIELLE!

FOODIE FRIDAY for January 22, 2009

Happy Friday, everyone!

After reading this entry, you might think I've gotten my Friday mixed up with Wednesday, since there's definitely some innuendo in these Foodie Friday pictures. No, it's not time for another edition of Hump Day Grammar yet! ;)

This one comes from THE BROOKLYN BOY. (I don't know who All You Can Eat is, but whoever's not doing him apparently doesn't get any food.)


And this one comes from EMILY, who spotted this outside a restaurant in Ocean City, Maryland. (Does this restaurant employ hookers to wait the tables there?)


Thanks to EMILY and THE BROOKLYN BOY for these amusing Foodie Friday pictures!

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC 815 for January 22, 2009

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC 815 is the newest weekly feature on Red Pen, Inc. It's a combination of recapping last night's episode of Lost and mocking some Lost-related bad writing. We can only assume that the publications whose writing is featured here must have had copy editors aboard Oceanic 815, and once the plane crashed and the copy editors died, the cheap-ass publications didn't hire anyone else to replace them...which results in the crappy writing/grammar/spelling found in this feature.

Before watching episode 1 of the fifth season of Lost, I took a little Lost-related quiz I found on the internet. I scored 66%--hey, I've still only seen half the third season, and I didn't watch ANY of the seasons in order, so whaddya expect? :) But even worse than my quiz score is the quality of grammar in question #13...

The first two errors are picky little things--just typos, omitted letters. But I laughed my butt off when I saw "The Count of Mounty Cristo." Mounty?!? It's totally Monte. Or at least it should be...

(For the record, the correct answer to this question was choice B.)

Now on to the Lost recap, or what passes for one (my mind's still on the hotness that is Sawyer; I can't think clearly right now). WARNING! POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

* Shirtless Sawyer is undoubtedly the best damn thing I'd seen all day.

* Who the hell is Jill (the older chick talking to Ben)? What's her deal?

* What's happening to Charlotte? Why isn't Faraday really trying to stop it?

* The Hurley scenes were touching. I find it interesting that while other people simply regret leaving the island, Hurley puts special emphasis on regretting the fact that they lied.

* Sun's getting edgier. I love it!

* I love how bad-ass Sayid is. Impaling that dude on the knives in a dishwasher? Awesome.

* Notice how Ben never answered whether or not Locke was really dead. So...is he? Or isn't he?

* Who's the annoying Neil guy who just sorta showed up out of nowhere?

* Oh, shit, now there's MORE guys on the show with hot accents. (I can't take it anymore! I want to move to England or Australia!) Or maybe not, since Locke got at least one of them with a well-aimed knife throw...

* Worst scene of the whole entire night: When Sawyer got a shirt again.

* Ana Lucia told Hurley to stay away from cops. Sayid told Hurley to do the opposite of what Ben said to do. Hurley took Sayid's advice, which led him...running outside to the cops. Hmmm...

* Is it just me, or is Richard kind of hot? (He also looks like he's wearing guyliner, doesn't he?)

* Did anyone else watch the little hour of Lost catch-up before the two-hour season premiere? (I did, and I thought it REALLY helped me remember things and get me up to speed, especially since I still haven't seen a few Lost episodes from season 3.)

For the absolute hands-down best Lost recaps around, you've gotta check out Doc Jensen from Entertainment Weekly. Click here to see his review of last night's episode!

Dear readers, what did you think of last night's episode? Favorite/least favorite moments? Talk to me in the Comments section...

Why the hell would you name your kid something crazy like this, anyway?

MAGGIE found this story about those goobers who named their kid after Adolf Hitler. I wonder if the writer made this little typo by mistake, or if she slyly slipped in that misspelling on purpose (that's the sort of thing I'd probably do if I had to write about a wacko family like this one).

Believe it or not, this isn't even the first time a Hitler-related misspelling has been featured on this blog...

Thanks to MAGGIE for spotting this one!

I wouldn't mind checkin' out *his* six-pack...

My Phillies have made me very, very angry. They made an apostrophe catastrophe in an e-mail blast that features a picture of The Most Beautiful Human Being On Earth (Cole Hamels, of course). It should be game's, not games. And didn't we already go over how it's so uncool to have any apostrophe errors anywhere near the greatness that is Cole Hamels?

Perhaps whoever wrote the copy for this e-blast was distracted by the image of Cole Hamels and the words "six-pack" appearing in the same vicinity? On that note: I think Hamels would pitch even better if he pitched shirtless. (God forbid the Phillies ever allow that to happen--nobody'd ever be able to shut me up. I'd be joyfully screaming my pretty little head off for, like, days. For serious.)

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for January 21, 2009

What's more gross than the grammar in this picture? THE DEVICE ITSELF. Ew. Ew. Ew!!!

I love how this is non-toxic to "human"--like, just one human. Not all humans--just, you know, one.

Also, exactly what kind of crazy-ass liquid does this thing ooze out?

This thing terrifies me.

I think I'll be seeing artificial hymens in my nightmares.

Mmm...eye candy!

RIMPY/THE PUNCTUATOR found this little gem for me after I shamelessly solicited for gifts of bad grammar for my upcoming birthday (and I'll keep soliciting, dammit, 'cause that's the kind of greedy bitch I am!).

This picture makes me smile for two reasons:

1. A computer tudor! Who does tudoring! That's freakin' hilarious. (I hope he doesn't also do English tutoring! That would not be super duper.)

2. When I think of the word Tudor, I think of this guy...

(Jonathan Rhys Meyers from The Tudors.)

Yummy...right, ladies?

Thanks, RIMPY, for sending in this great picture (of the spelling error...not of the eye candy)!

HAPPY INAUGURATION DAY (1 of 2)

Krispy Kreme, how could you? You're awesome enough to make delicious, sugary donuts, but you're not smart enough to write a press release that's free of embarrassing errors? (Readers, should they have written Americans' or America's? Which do you think they meant to say? I think either of those choices could work here, but the choice they wrote definitely does not work.)

Don't forget to get your free donut today! (Not sure where to find a Krispy Kreme store? Click here!)

HAPPY INAUGURATION DAY! (post 2 of 2)

ANNE MARIE found this embarrassing little mistake on the official inauguration website. (Hey, Obama, do you need a good proofreader over there in the White House? Pick me, pick me, pick me!!! *waves hand super-duper-annoyingly fast*)

Thanks to ANNE MARIE for finding this one!

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for January 20, 2009

Red Pen, Inc. reader MARK has nominated the person who wrote this article to be an inductee in the Homonym Hall of Shame! C'mon, dude--you're a writer. You work with words for a living. And you don't know that illicit and elicit don't mean the same thing? Sigh.

How is it that people like this get paid to write...and people like me are freakin' webmasters? *grumble*

Thanks, MARK, for spotting this one!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for January 19, 2009 (1 of 2)

New Red Pen, Inc. reader MICHAEL, who read this music-related RPI post from last week, found an even better music-related error for us this week. He says: I almost died laughing when I read this user comment. The fact that I was on my laptop in a public lounge didn't help. It's from a lyrics web page for The Killers' "Human," regarding the line "Are we human, or are we dancer?" (the site actually has "dancers," but that's beside the point). I thought you might enjoy it, especially following so close on the heels of the "Supermassive" incident.

This one totally made me chuckle. And I think the person who wrote the user comment is, um, denser.

Thanks, MICHAEL, for finding this one!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for January 19, 2009 (2 of 2)

...while the writer of this article denied the claims that he cannot spell and that he's in serious need of the services of a good copy editor.

Thanks to YVIE for spotting this one!

Let's go, Eagles!

Click the picture to see a bigger version!

I'm rarely excited about football games, but today I'm rooting hardcore for my Eagles to make it into the Super Bowl. All they've gotta do is kick some Cardinal ass. And I think (or at least hope) they can do it...

This picture comes to us from ChicagoLady. She says: I think the only people who leave comments for articles are those who don't know how to spell. Besides the capitalization error, and the annoying use of all caps, how many errors can you find?

I was an English major, so counting is not among my strong suits. But I noticed that this person misspelled the name of my beloved baseball team, the city in which my beloved baseball team plays, and the name of the football team from the other side of the state of Pennsylvania. I find it ironic that this person seems to be cheering for a bunch of PA teams, but they can't correctly spell the name of any city or team in the entire state of PA. Sigh.

Thanks to ChicagoLady for this one! And...FLY, EAGLES, FLY...

*What* kind of strike is this...?

OK, I know I should be all excited and grateful that nobody got hurt in this little airplane snafu, but I can't help it--I've gotta be snarky and comment on this news site's choice of phrasing. I get that the plane struck a flock of birds, but the way this is written makes me think there was a line of picketing birds in front of the airplane, holding up signs and making lots of noise. I mean, bird strike? Is that like a writers' strike, or what?

A little mistake...

YVIE sent this picture in. She says: I feel validated for finding an error that wasn't apostrophe-based for once. And then I kind of feel like an ass for nitpicking a tragic article. ...Just not enough to not send it along.

Yeah, they totally should have used mistaken here instead of mistakenly. Ironically, this mistake was about words that are related to the word mistake. Tee-hee!

Thanks, YVIE, for not letting your conscience stop you from sending this one in! Remember, kids, mocking tragedy's never cool, but simply mocking a grammar mistake in an article about a tragedy? Perfectly acceptable!

More proof that The Grammarphile has a freak magnet implanted somewhere in her pretty little body.

OK, there's totally a difference between a cute little kitty having a foot fetish...and a weird, pervy guy having a foot fetish.

Who remembers my run-in with Mr. Home Depot Motorized Scooter Man (sounds like a "Real Men of Genius" name, doesn't it?)? You know, the one who followed me around the store talking to me about my stiletto heels? If you haven't heard this story yet, you must click here. (It's legendary. Seriously.)

So I know you're thinking, "But that happened back in April. Why bring it up again now?"

Here's why. Last night I needed to buy salt--like the kind you throw on your driveway to melt the snow. I went to Home Depot to buy it because that was the closest place for me to go. And despite the fact that the temperature's in the single digits, there I am, wearing open-toed stiletto heels, as usual. So I hop out of my car, I'm freezing my ass off, I'm walking briskly, and I hear--

"HEY!!! Nice heels!"

There he was. Mr. Home Depot Motorized Scooter Man. He was about 30 feet away from me in the parking lot. I had no fucking idea how he knew I was wearing heels. Could he see the stilettos from that far away? Does he have some sort of crazy high heel radar?

I just smiled, waved, and RAN THE FUCK AWAY. Can you blame me? I really do get sick of my freak magnet sometimes, even though it does provide me with some funny-as-hell stories.

So this foot "fettish" post is dedicated to the one and only Mr. Home Depot Motorized Scooter Man, whom I hope I never have to encounter again. He's very friendly, but he's also really freakin' WEIRD.

A-choooo! (I'm allergic to crappy writing.)

This picture, which JEANNE spotted, is a CDC-related error. She found this on a box of tissues, (whose footnotes led her to the CDC source, which was listed on the bottom of the box), and she thinks this was given away (to a doctor's office, perhaps) by someone who works in health care. JEANNE says: Since they made mouth and nose the subjects, one would expect to have the verb go with them, right? Instead, I keep picturing a mouth and nose going in the trash...

Freakin' hilarious. Thanks, JEANNE, for sending in this picture!

FOODIE FRIDAY for January 16, 2009

It's finally Friday! That means I'm a very happy little Grammarphile. Let's see what sorts of deliciously grammatically-challenged treats await us today...

This one comes from DAVE. I'm guessing this an Engrish-y sort of mistake...

(Thanks, DAVE, for finding this one!)


There's something fishy going on here...


Looks like somebody swam off with an r. The word herring has two of the letter r, of course!

And if you're in the mood for a sweet grammar mistake, check out this cake recently featured on the awesomeness that is Cake Wrecks.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Potty humor!

These pictures were submitted by my friend PETER, who recently came back from a trip to India. He has some really interesting stories about his travels. One thing I find particularly amusing is that cuss words are much more prevalent over in India than here in America--they have a much larger pool of cuss words over there than we do here. It's also acceptable and entertaining to use the cuss words in public or in polite company, and the cuss words seem to be more explicit than most of the cuss words Americans use. We say "asshole"; they say "sister-fucker." We say "bitch"; they say "grandma-fucker."

Here are some other entertaining things folks in India have said (or, more accurately, written)...on signs:


I think "attach bath" is a very charming Engrish-y type of phrase, don't you? But then there's this...


I really hope that the drinking water isn't coming from exactly the same place as the toilet (ew!). But I suppose it's nice to know that if that is the case, at least they regret the inconvenience!

PETER also brought me a really cool souvenir from India--a carved statue of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of overcoming obstacles and is also the patron god of writers. (If you've been enjoying my posts even more than usual lately, it's because Ganesha's been sitting on my desk, sending good vibes my way as I write and helping me combat my writer's block.) Thanks, PETER, for these photos and for little Ganesha!

Gator-iffic!

(Click on the picture to open up a bigger version of it!)

This one was submitted by KRISTIN. She has a particular client at work whose grasp on grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a little shaky. KRISTIN says: Every time I get an email from this guy I just shudder. Not only does he not spell correctly, he doesn’t use punctuation. It just makes me want to stick sharp things in my ears to poke my brain out…

My favorite parts of this e-mail are the lines like: SEE - TOUCH - PHOTO - LIVE GATORS! Are you seeing and touching and photographing live gators, or are you seeing and touching a photograph of live gators? Hmmm...

Thanks, KRISTIN, for this entertaining e-mail!

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for January 14, 2008

Finally, a reader-submitted HUMP DAY GRAMMAR photo! (Despite the fact that everyone really likes commenting on the Hump Day Grammar posts, nobody ever actually sends me any Hump Day Grammar stuff, which means that I usually have to wade into the bowels of the Internets to find this crazy shit all on my own...thanks, guys! *wink*)

Thanks to SHILO for being brave enough to send in a HUMP DAY GRAMMAR picture. You'll notice that there are multiple errors in this picture, but I only highlighted one of them. The best mistake here is a misspelling; the others are (I'm hoping) really just examples of Chatlish. (Laura over at A WALK IN THE WORDS wrote a good piece on Chatlish the other day; click here to check it out!)

Ahhh, pregnate. There's a word pregnant, and a word impregnate, and I guess that pregnate is what you get when pregnant mates with impregnate. Little Pregnate, that squealing bundle of joy, pops out and visits--where else?--the Yahoos over at Yahoo Answers.

Thanks, SHILO, for sending in this one!

ZIP-a-dee-doo-dah!

This picture comes to us from MAGGIE, our fabulous Goddess of Gossip. She says: This article contains one of my many pet peeves: the use of "zip code" rather than "ZIP code."

When I saw her e-mail, I cracked the hell up because sometimes I make this very mistake! I have a habit of forgetting that the "ZIP" in ZIP code is actually an acronym for "Zone Improvement Plan." Oops!

I'm glad MAGGIE sent in this one--it's a good reminder for me that a) even wise-ass Grammarphiles aren't always perfect, and b) that the ZIP in "ZIP code" should always be capitalized! :)

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for January 13, 2009

This one comes from JUSTIN, who's one of my very favorite friends. This sign totally makes me smile. I'm not sure which piece of it is my favorite: the rampant unnecessary capitalization, the typo'ed word glady (which I think just sounds/looks funny), or the double whammy of the first piece of this sign--a homonym error AND a screwy sentence fragment all in one!

Thanks, JUSTIN, for spotting this one!

Screw you, snow!

Where I live, it snowed this weekend. I hate snow. HATE it. With a passion. For me, the only thing snow's ever been good for is an excuse to cancel school. But now that I'm not in school anymore and can't have snow days, I hate snow. I feel like I spend half my winter staring at a Very Popular Weather Website, trying to figure out if and when snow will hit my area. Snow fucks up my plans (since I'm absolutely terrified to drive in snow), makes me wear closed-toed shoes instead of open-toed stilettos, and makes me have to (eventually, after I cannot avoid it any longer) go shovel off the car and the driveway.

None of these things make me happy. In fact, they make me really, really cranky. Since I can't very well run around outside punching snowflakes (well, I could, but I'd look like a complete lunatic), I have to find some other way to get rid of my snow-fueled aggression. So why not take a red pen to the Very Popular Weather Website that always gives me the bad news about snow being in the forecast? (In this case, I think it's perfectly appropriate to shoot the messenger...or, at the very least, correct his crappy grammar.)


I'm sorry, snow will what eastward? (I'm assuming they meant to use the word track, but how does that even make sense? The Very Popular Weather Website is the entity tracking the snow. The snow itself is not tracking--right?)

That's great news for the flood victims, but what about those of us whose delicate grammar sensibilities are suffering after having to look at all the careless typos and grammar goof-ups on your website? (These are just two of many errors I've recently seen there.)

If you live in an area whose residents know snow only as that thing that always looks so pretty in the movies (but they've never actually seen it in their town in real life), won't you please consider adopting a sweet little Grammarphile? I don't take up much space, I don't eat much, and I'm well-behaved. Usually.

Why yes, I *am* soliciting for birthday presents...

My birthday's in two weeks and one day. I'll be turning 28 on the 27th. And I think the fact that this Polish sorority girl has made it to her 28th birthday without doing something so severely klutzy as to kill or seriously maim herself is a cause for celebration--don't you agree?

I want birthday presents, dammit. And the best presents you guys can give me are gifts of bad grammar (and screwy spelling, putrid punctuation mistakes, and anything involving crappy and/or nonsensical writing). It's the gift that keeps on giving--if you give me a Red Pen, Inc. submission and then I write something funny about the bad grammar you found, it'll make you giggle. And giggling is fun!

You've got 15 days to find appropriate birthday presents for a Grammarphile. Send 'em to thegrammarphile@yahoo.com. (You don't even have to wrap them, or attach any big, fluffy bows!) You don't want me to be crying all over my cupcakes on the 27th because I've gotten no presents, do you? That's right--I didn't think so!

A rare football-related post on Red Pen, Inc...

I'm obviously much more of a baseball girl than a football girl, but I couldn't help talking a little bit about football, seeing as how a) the Iggles are playing a very important game against the Giants today, and b) the grammar in this football-related blurb is just too awful to ignore. Somebody needs to teach this writer some neither/nor rules. Yikes!

Fly, Eagles, fly! (And hey, Eagles fans...no more of this kind of crappy grammar, please...got it? You make the rest of us Philly sports fans look like idiots.)

A supermassive spelling error.

My friends know I have two really big weaknesses: baseball players and rock stars. During baseball season, you can often find me at various ballparks, screaming my face off at hot ballplayers like Cole Hamels, Jeff Francoeur, and Ryan Church, among others. During the offseason, though, I tend to develop random music-related crushes, the latest of which is the gorgeous and talented Matthew Bellamy from Muse (OK, I have more of a crush on his lyrics than on him personally, but the man's got spiky-ish hair, a hot accent, and blue eyes, which, in my semi-warped opinion, makes him totally crush-worthy). Which is why I am not at all pleased (OK, perhaps I'm mildly amused) that some moron misspelled the name of one of my favorite Muse songs. It's not "Suppermassive Black Hole", dammit. It's "Supermassive Black Hole". Matthew Bellamy is too damn fabulous to have silly spelling errors in the titles of his band's songs. Grrr. I mean, I get that supermassive is a made-up word, but how hard is it to spell, really?

Even the losers get misapostrophized sometimes...

PAT says: "Unfortunately, not every blog can be as sophisticated and educated as FanIQ. It's a damn shame. Normally I wouldn't put them out there like that, but they're talking shit about my Celtics. That's unacceptable."

I understand completely. I know I've Red Penned certain websites whose authors trash-talk my beloved Phillies. (Those authors deserved it, the bastards.) So I can't blame Pat one bit for Red Penning these guys. Bloggers, here's your lesson for the day: Beware folks with good grammar sensibilities and whose teams you've just scorned, kiddos. Sooner or later you're gonna misplace an apostrophe or misspell a word, and then you become blog fodder. ;)

Thanks to PAT for sending in this one. PAT's blog at FanIQ is quite cool, and it's free of "loser's"...so go check it out!

FOODIE FRIDAY for January 9, 2009

Mmm, what would be better than to indulge in some delicious pastries...especially when there are some very mockable misspellings involved?

I know the letter p in the word raspberry is silent, but that doesn't mean it also needs to be invisible.



It saddens me that someone on this planet doesn't know how to spell the name of one of the sweetest, yummiest, most scrumptious treats around...chocolate!



And just to clarify--yes, I am that type of pain in the ass customer who wanders around stores and restaurants, looking for word-related errors, whipping out my camera every time I see something that involves crappy grammar and/or misspellings...which really seems to confuse the poor folks working at these sorts of businesses. I have an evil streak. But you guys already knew that. ;)

Happy Friday, everyone!

No, thanks--just one stomach is good enough for me!

This might not be the smartest way to advertise losing flab. People who have a goal of losing something don't want to think about gaining anything. And the way this is phrased almost makes me think that this flat stomach that you're gaining is a second stomach. Isn't that what it sounds like? And who the hell wants a second stomach? (I sure as hell don't--I like the one I have just fine. And where would I put a second stomach, anyway?)

As long as I'm being picky, I may as well mention that I noticed the awkwardness of this phrase and that there are these things called indefinite articles, for crying out loud...so freakin' use them! For example: the lovely word a. So simple to remember, right? Sigh.

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for January 7, 2009

OK, guys. I'm pretty much unshockable. But the rather large number of people who went onto Yahoo Answers and asked about whether or not having sex with Siamese twins constituted a threesome is enough to make my jaw drop.

Other surprising things:

* I didn't know the life span of Siamese twins was large enough that they'd reach the age where they would actually be able to have sex

* I'm kind of surprised at how freely this person admits that yeah, he or she had sex with Siamese twins

* What the fuck sort of dirty word that fits in THAT context is just three letters long? What body part could Yahoo Answers have possibly bleeped out there? The only one I can think of is ass, but I'm not sure that's the one the answerer was going for...

* Does anybody (besides the weirdo who answered the question) really think that having sex with Siamese twins is going to be GREAT? I mean, for effin' REAL.

* The ONLY thing odd about having sex with Siamese twins was too much noise? That's it? That was the only weird thing?

Yeah. I'm sort of speechless now.