Naturally, most of us on the editorial staff here at the Planet are unabashed language and grammar geeks. Not that one necessarily follows the other – judging by plenty of the submissions we receive, an obsessive love of English and the desire to get it exactly right all the time are by no means prerequisites for journalistic ambition – but around here we love to argue about the nuances of definition, to debate the appropriateness of semicolon usage in particular instances, to ask what the word is that's like a certain word, but a little different, a little more exact.
We get super-bummed (see? That's how we feel – no other word would fit right there except, uh, "super-bummed") when mistakes inevitably show up in the paper, when something that isn't right gets through the filter and into print. For us, there's something miraculous about expressing an idea with those weird symbols. It's downright alchemical. We feel a bit like keepers of the flame – as writers, editors and publishers, we have to set the standard, and hopefully our earnest, if imperfect, attempts at correctness in usage will inspire others to be as respectful of language.
And that's why nothing pisses us off quite like seeing a sign with a misspelled word, or a misplaced piece of punctuation.
On one hand, it's just lazy, and that's bad enough. But on a deeper level, publicly sticking an apostrophe before the "s" in every plural noun you print ("2-4-1 CORONA'S & MARGARITA'S ON TUESDAY'S!") because you never bothered to learn what an apostrophe actually denotes is both dangerous and ominous, like the kid in the movie who doesn't learn the Rules for Responsible Use of Magic before he begins casting spells willy-nilly. No, nobody ever got killed because of a sign advertising donuts at the improbably low price of ".99 cents." But you're still fucking with some pretty powerful forces. It's dangerous because people will see the sign, and assume that it's correct. It's ominous because it's not just a sign for donuts, it's a sign of the times, saying it's OK to not sweat the details, accuracy is unimportant, ignorance is perfectly acceptable. And as a direct result, we've got "new-kyoo-lar" in the dictionary as an accepted pronunciation of "nuclear" – even though the order of the letters in the word makes that impossible – and the contraction "it's," which is short for "it is" and never a possessive pronoun, misused in the New York Times with regularity.
It shouldn't be insulting only to me, because I trade in words. In fact, I know it isn't. I have a conversation about bad signs at least once a month, and it's more often than not with someone who isn't a teacher or journalist, but just a person who paid attention in elementary school. Bad signs make the whole species look bad. When the alien who's been sent to Earth to gauge the possibility of enslaving the human race reports back to its superiors, it's gonna say, "Oh, no problem. They don't even know the difference between the sweet final course of the evening meal, and an arid expanse of land characterized by sand and cacti!"
Unfortunately, the folks out there who make bad signs aren't about to be shamed into picking up a book on grammar written for 12-year-olds.
Fortunately, though, I think I've got the solution.
There are a lot of young people in college right now who want a job in journalism, far more than will ever actually find themselves writing for a living. There just aren't enough gigs to go around. So most of them will go on to teach, or write ad copy, or proofread Masters' theses, while they post on their blogs and apply for every newspaper position that opens up.
But what if there were a national internship program, founded and overseen by a concerned group of media, that guaranteed a job somewhere in the industry? Think of it as a sort of private-sector G.I. Bill for aspiring journalists, one that performs a public service while furthering the educations of its recruits.
During or upon graduation from college, interested parties could agree to spend, say, 12 hours a week scouring their respective hometowns, proofreading and correcting local signage. All potential misspellings or out-of-place punctuation would have to be researched prior to correction, and all such research documented like so:
"4/12/2005. Noticed the word 'burittoes' on sign at Mexican restaurant Pepito's. Consulted dictionary (Webster's Collegiate). Ascertained that word was unacceptable form of 'burritos.' Contacted owner, who admitted no humorous intent. Correction to sign was made, same day."
Everyone who enters the program would be promised some sort of position in the publishing and/or news industry; the quality of the initial position would depend upon the quality of one's performance during one's year-long internship.
Everybody wins. Business owners whose grammatical skills might be a bit lacking get good signs, prospective writers get to hone their baseline skills, and media companies get employees that know the difference between "your" and "you're."
And as for those business owners who, when politely braced on the subject of their substandard signage, refuse to let some snot-nosed college boy (or girl) tell them how to run their business?
They get their photos on the front page of the local paper's Neighborhood section, right next to the headline that says "Guess Who's Illiterate This Week?"
SCOTT.HARRELL@WEEKLYPLANET.COM
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2005.
