if I were better at grammar...

This is from an article that ran in Friday's Des Moines Register. I know we just talked about this mood in class—and that typically in this case were should be used. For some reason, though, this usage just seems wrong to me. Now I'm confused about which is right.

Facebook should include spellcheck.

I love facebook. Here are two mistakes in one screen-shot! Instead of "will become" it should read "be" and instead of "gonna" it should be "going to."

One more strike, and you're out.

what are you doing right now?

I just realized the Facebook status update feature is a gold mine of grammatical mistakes. Right now someone is "happy that its the weekend," which would make it a possessive of some sort. What this status should read is "happy it's the weekend," meaning happy that it is the weekend.

Either way, I'm happy it is too.

Cheers

to many, or to few

Came across this mistake while I was facebook stalking people in class. I guess you do get something out of not paying attention. My friend is getting "TO MANY philanthropy texts." I think he is actually getting "TOO MANY."

Maybe someone should be paying attention...

Cheers

i hate to be that girl....

But I can't help myself.

In reading someone's blog, I came across this... "since" should be "sense."

I'm sorry, I'm a monster.

please, I beg you, use a comma.

I realize that I am picking on the poor staff of the WJT a lot, but there are just too many mistakes to pass up. In this story discussing accidents caused by the weather, one of my pet peeves showed up again and again—a comma separating two clauses in a sentence is repeatedly missing. "Three people were possibly injured in a two-vehicle accident Jan. 17 on interstate 80 near mile marker 206 three miles southeast of Victor," is what the sentence reads.

In what isn't the greatest sentence ever written, the missing comma just makes me cringe a little. Though it really isn't an issue that prevents the reader from understanding the message, it just makes me stop a little at the end, and wish for punctuation.

Cheers

good grammar—on the sidelines

In the second installment of the WJT, I ran into a few issues. In the lead of this article it reads "These past four decades, though not on the field, Denison is still as much a part of EV sports as he ever was." Since the dedication happened in the past, the sentence should read "Denison has been as much a part of..." I think fixing the verb to put the action in the past tense would make it read a little more clearly.

Another issue I had in this story is purely an editing choice. We have discussed in class the ethics/science to changing quotes. In each quote from the nice old man the story focuses on, there is a grammatically incorrect, if colorful, sentence. "You got to keep your mouth shut," and words like "holler," pop up more frequently than I ever thought they would. I think it makes sense that this kind of publication would keep the language true to what he said, but there is definitely something to making him sound slightly better spoken. I wouldn't have changed all the words, but maybe fixed up a few things more than the WJT staff did.

Cheers

only the hard surfaces

This is a news brief from the Williamsburg Journal Tribune, a small town newspaper from Williamsburg, Iowa. It is describing the new school dismissal alert system and says "Late starts, early dismissals or bus routes on hard surfaces only are just a few of the alerts provided." There are a few too many adverbs and adjectives thrown in. Instead of using "only" and "just" they should have instead used one to describe the wide variety of services provided through this new system. Either that, or used some creative commas to let only describe something else in the sentence.

Since I love small-town newspapers, the next few posts will be from the WJT— something to look forward to!

As opposed to hostile same day service

Garage door and opener repairs has "fast, friendly same day service." But wait a second, does that mean that only their same day service is friendly? What about the others. The problem here seems to be a misplaced (or missing) comma. Though the serial comma is a point of flexibility, this is not a case where it applies because without it, the meaning of the sentence changes slightly.

live it, love it... proofread it?

Since the beginning of this year, I have driven downtown to Meredith Corporation three times a week, every week. On the way I pass a lot of signs--most that hardly even grab my attention because I have seen them so many times. One sign, however, never failed to capture my attention; it said "Live it, Love it, Lofts."

I don't think there is anything technically incorrect about this, aside from the fact that it is only phrases, and not complete sentences. But what bothered me every time I saw it was that "lofts" seemed to disagree with "it" in the previous two statements. I would have far preferred to see "live it, love it, loft it" even though that makes even less sense.

The sign has, thankfully, been taken down (but can be seen above on the company website).

Cheers

the infamous sign

This mistake might be pretty obvious by now. So many people have commented on (read: made fun of) the use of "there's," meaning "there is" instead of the appropriate and correct "there are" that it pretty much goes without saying why this is here.

Enjoy!

the home depot, now attaching birds?

I don't know a whole lot about hummingbird feeding activities, but I am fairly certain that feeders aren't meant to "attach" bird to them. Instead, what I think the web entry is trying to say is that the hummingbird bottle feeder "attracts" birds. This error is a simple proofreading mistake that seems like it could have easily been avoided.

Cheers