Why I always search (not spell check) for public/pubic

A friend was proofreading my speed-typing for a medical school publication at University of Southern California, and discovered that I'd left the "L" out of "public." Editing and proofreading saved the day -- and my professional reputation. Those friends still laugh with me, decades later. 

___________ 

From Yahoo! news in 2012

University of Texas apologizes for ‘pubic affairs’ commencement typo

Eric PfeifferMay 21, 2012

The University of Texas at Austin's public affairs assistant dean has issued an apology after a commencement listing for the program's forthcoming graduates contained a typo citing the Lyndon B. Johnson School of 'Pubic' Affairs.

Even the best writers, reporters and editors fall prey to the occasional typo. And it's probably bad karma to revel in someone else's unintentional mistake. But media critic Jim Romenesko reports that the LBJ school issued an apology via Twitter, reading, "Our deepest apologies to our 2012 graduates for the egregious typo in our program. We are working to distribute corrected programs."

Susan Binford, assistant dean for communications at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, tells Romenesko that students will be issued new copies of the commencement program.

"Obviously, we are mortified. It's beyond embarrassing," Binford said. "As soon as we realized the mistake [on Saturday], everybody went into overdrive and we went to work to reprint it."

Still, it's interesting how much fuss the omission of one letter can lead to. No one was killed, no one lost their job and any concerned parties can rest assured that they will have a corrected commencement program to reflect upon in the future. But it's not going to stop the critics of the world from expressing their outrage at the fallibility of others. Though for most of us, it will probably be remembered with little more than a quick laugh.

The image was first posted to Twitter by Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith.

________  

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title): 

We Shall Be Changed (2010) 

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)   

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014) 

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)   

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)

Freudian slip, illiteracy, or just a gift for people with a love of irony?

Buried in a news story on NPR, National Public Radio, I found a paragraph that kept me laughing for several hours. I didn't laugh about the allegation of voter fraud by a public figure who has baselessly cried "Election fraud!" against the massive evidence of audits and failed lawsuits, but because this attorney is so sure of his own perfection that he didn't proofread his own official documents submitted to a court, nor did he task a member of his law firm with checking his copy. 

Here's the section that amused me. 

"In the weeks after the [2020] November presidential election, [Lin] Wood was one of the most prominent voices spreading misinformation about the nation's vote-counting process, filing several failed lawsuits seeking to toss out millions of votes and block Joe Biden from becoming the next president.

"In one suit, the defamation lawyer ... accidentally wrote his lawsuit was filed under "plenty" of perjury instead of "penalty," and attempted to push debunked claims of fraud all the way to the Supreme Court."

A lawyer promising plenty of perjury. It must be a first! 

A figure of speech walked into a bar

 

I grew up in a teetotal home and religious denomination, so I can't say I've walked into a bar, unless you count English pubs where I could order a nice pasty (meat pie) or a bowl of chicken and leek soup. Still, I recognize a good opening line to a joke!

2001--A pub in Cork, Ireland, with my name on it. I didn't walk into this bar, either! 

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. 

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

- Jill Thomas Doyle

For poets and their editors

Aspiring poets and literary editors: A few "hard returns" and white space, and verbal poop becomes art. 
 

The book is not real, but Trump's words are real,
word salad served up in Florida on December 21, 2019. 

I never understood wind.
You know, I know
windmills very much.
I have studied it
better than anybody
else. It’s very expensive.
They are made in China
and Germany mostly.
—Very few made here, almost none,
but they are manufactured, tremendous
—if you are into this—
tremendous fumes. Gases are
spewing into the atmosphere. You know
we have a world
right?

So the world
is tiny
compared to the universe.
So tremendous, tremendous
amount of fumes and everything.
You talk about
the carbon footprint
— fumes are spewing into the air.
Right? Spewing.
Whether it’s in China,
Germany, it’s going into the air.
It’s our air
their air
everything — right?

A windmill will kill many bald eagles.
After a certain number
they make you turn the windmill off.
That is true.
—By the way
they make you turn it off.
And yet, if you killed one
they put you in jail.
That is OK.

You want to see a bird graveyard?
You just go.
Take a look.
A bird graveyard.
Go under a windmill someday,
you’ll see
more birds
than you’ve ever seen
in your life.

~ D. Trump
12/21/2019

*************** 

I'd like to buy a bowel, please

Today's lesson in punctuation, boys and girls, 

is on the subject of colons:

Well, actually, according to The Punctuation Guide, 

The colon is used to introduce a list of items, for emphasis, or between independent clauses.
The colon is used to separate two independent clauses when the second explains or illustrates the first. In such usage, the colon functions in much the same way as the semicolon. As with the semicolon, do not capitalize the first word after the colon unless the word is ordinarily capitalized.

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title):

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)  

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)

Query: Where were the editors?

Answer: The author probably "edited" his novel with 

MS Word spell check.
Don't be that guy.

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these books (click the colored title):

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)  

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

Editornado [ed•i•tohr•NAY•doh] (Words. Communications. Book reviews. Cartoons.)

Deadlines, schmedlines

Historically, the date is slightly off. I think the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 2, 1776, after militias were being raised and skirmishes had begun.

But this meme is funny because we've all "been there" when it comes to deadlines.

Happy Independence Day!

Deadlines, schmedlines