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

Spelling matters

Brought to you by the same people who insist on English-only because this is America. 

via GIPHY

REVIEW: "Unraptured," by Zack Hunt

Mind. Blown. I did not see THAT coming.
5/5 stars for Zack Hunt’s Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong.

Having spent most of my life in a denomination that was founded because of the imminent second coming of Jesus, and which taught against a "secret rapture" and prophesied about an every-eye-shall-see-him event, I had different expectations when I was given the advance copy (ARC) of "Unraptured" to read and review. I carefully read the chapters and highlighted many sentences and paragraphs that resonated with my experience: Jesus is coming soon, the books of Daniel and Revelation are prophecies of future events so we can get ready for heaven and avoid hell (a.k.a. hellfire insurance), the need to live a holy and perfect life to hurry Jesus along, obedience to the gospel commission to teach and convert the world, and the importance of "right beliefs." (And so much more, wow...)

Over the course of my Christian life, I memorized fundamental belief proof texts and got A's in my religion classes at Christian university. I taught Bible classes at church and was ordained as an elder (not a pastor). For funzies, I took a New Testament Greek class from one of my pastors and still own the reference books to prove it. As a professional church musician for many years, I heard two or three sermons every weekend, and made copious notes in my study Bible's margins. I worked or contracted for some denominational institutions (which is why I'm not identifying them). I've spent many happy years volunteering in activities that were sometimes related to church, but more often related to my desire to change the world a little at a time. So yeah, I had all the religious beliefs down, pro and con.

In Zack Hunt's book, I laughed where he wanted readers to laugh, and felt his anguish when his expectations were dashed. I learned more about dispensationalism (not a thing in my churches). I saw glimpses of items he's posted in social media. I had been given a loose deadline to write the review, but I could not skim or hurry to the end of this book--it needed to be chewed and digested. I'm glad I spent the few extra hours, because at about the 50 percent mark, it gets meaty.

I had no idea Hunt would write passionately about the Bible's call to social justice and a religion that *works*. I knew that 1 Corinthians 13 wasn't about wedding vows, but about what godly love for one another should be. But when Hunt connected that passage with Matthew 25 and Revelation, and performing works of love because that will bring the incarnation of God into our lives rather than wait for the second coming to escape this world--mind blown.

As a little child, I was sexually assaulted for years by a relative. When I told my mother, she did everything she knew to make it stop and she protected me, but our church didn't believe in psychological therapy at that time, so I internalized the assaults and told no one else. We know now that such trauma festers and doesn't heal. There were lifelong physical and emotional scars for me, and I've realized in the last four years that I never learned to play, or to love. I confessed to God that I didn't love him the way I saw other Christians love him (yes, I know we shouldn't compare, but who can help it?), but I would honor him with obedience and by helping where I could, in service. That was the best I could do, and I was pretty sure God understood that.

But that's where the shock of "Unraptured" came. I had no idea that the kind of love God is seeking--cooking, feeding, clothing, visiting, helping, advocating with my communications skills, donating stuff and donating blood--is a *preferred* way of loving God and loving his children.

So for all the insights, the laughs where my experiences were similar, and for the validation, this book deserves its five stars and more. Sorry I can't choose just one of the many passages I highlighted. You'll have to do that yourself!

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these books:

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.)

What if we are all characters in a book?

*****

Christy K Robinson is author of these books:

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.)

Martin Luther book endorsements

REVIEW: From Miracle to Murder, by Joyce A Lefler

A quick, compulsive, must-read thriller you wouldn't expect from the mother of a murdered child, From Miracle to Murder is a mystery both fascinating and horrifying -- because it really happened. 

  from Editornado on July 21, 2018
 
5 stars, well-deserved for excellent writing, story-telling, and pacing
 
I stepped out of my 17th-century history genre to read this true-crime book, From Miracle to Murder: Justice for Adam. I was blown away by the poignant love story of a domestic violence victim and her two children, one of whom was disabled--and murdered at age 6....
 
See your full review  
(But then Amazon took my review offline because my endorsement is printed on the back cover of the book, and they thought I was biased. So my review evaporated into the ether and I don't have a copy of it.)

REVIEW: The Correspondence of John Cotton

from Editornado on July 21, 2018   Fantastic research book into early-colonial Boston.   This book is EXACTLY what I hoped for. The letters are transcribed from numerous sources, and placed by date. Each letter has commentary on the condition of the holograph or transcription, the circumstances of the sender and receiver, and footnotes for obscure words or phrases. If there was a letter Cotton received and was answering point by point, that letter is also included.

I hate you, autocorrect!

Email blasts that go straight to the spam folder

No wonder it ended up in my email spam folder.

 

The Secretary of State for Arizona, Michelle Reagan, sent an email blast titled "Show Us the Money!!!!" 

 

Sorry, people, there are no more exclamation marks available for use today. Not just in Arizona, but North America. She used them all in one email title. Come back tomorrow, when we get another exclamation mark shipment.

 

The other thing is that her title and content were too much like the scams sent by Nigerians or the fake PayPal and Netflix people trying to get me to "update" my account info and password. 

For instance, here's how the third spam down (in my folder) begins: 

 

Hello Dear, [Don't call me Dear. You're a ripoff scammer/phisher in Africa.]

 

I apologize if the content of my email is contrary to your moral ethics [I have much higher ethics than you do, sucker] but I find it pleasurable to offer you my partnership in business. I am Cpt.Joe Davison, an officer in the US Army, presently serving in the Military with the 82nd Airborne Division Peace Keeping Force here in Afghanistan. [The 82nd Airborne is an elite parachute division, not a peace-keeping force.] I need your help in assisting me with the safe keeping of Two Military Trunk Boxes. [What's in a box that you have to keep secret?]

 

I hope you can be trusted? If you can be trusted, I will explain further when I get a response from you for further clarification.Nevertheless, please ensure to reply via my private E-MAIL...  [Your email address has been shared with the 82nd Airborne web page, tee-hee! Good luck with that.]

As for the Arizona Secretary of State's email, below the graphics, the text begins:

Show Us the Money!!!!

 

Money in politics. It’s been a hot topic since 1758 when George Washington spent nearly all of his campaign budget on booze to win over voters on Election Day.

 

Ever since, our country has debated the role of money in politics and how it impacts our elections...

 

 

The clever email blaster will avoid keywords that send your communications straight to the trash.

Some of those triggers or keywords are:

• money
• check or money order
• trust
• terms of endearment
• "words" like 4U and gr8
• partner
• inherit
• help
• assistance
• parcel
• claim
• excessive punctuation marks
• poor spelling
• odd turns of phrase
• links that make readers suspicious that they'll be pushed to malware or virus sites  

When I worked full-time for a nonprofit company, I wrote email blasts that directed attention to specific pages on our website and printed magazine, as well as our appeal letters. The blasts were read by several team members with different points of view. They were coordinated with our other communications for the best results: goodwill to the company, participation in our initiatives, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations each year.  

You may be wise about what emails you receive, open, or send to spam in your business or personal email, but think carefully about the emails you send. Your readers may not be as sophisticated as you are, and their email provider may divert your communications so that they never see it. Try to think as your intended audience, give it a few minutes, read it through again, and then send it.