This past Saturday I received a letter from a prominent university in Spokane, WA. The letter, on official university letterhead, detailed a piano sale from their music department. The letter was fine…until the very last sentence. At that point, they blew it.

Credit cads? Sigh…

This is the problem with relying on a spellchecker. The word ‘cads’ isn’t misspelled, so it didn’t get a squiggly red line placed under it to notify the writer of a potential problem. The problem lies in the fact that ‘cads’ is simply the incorrect word to use in that sentence (it should be CARDS).

So, please, please don’t just trust your spellchecker! I imagine this letter was mailed out to thousands of people in our area. I’m sure one of the journalism or English majors at the university would have done an excellent job of proofreading this letter and rectified this embarrassing mistake if they would have been given the opportunity.

Just food for thought…

My laptop ran one of its annoying updates the other day and this unsightly little dialog box appeared on my screen. My initial reaction was, “good grief, I can’t believe they missed that mistake.” My second reaction was, “hey, I need to save that for the blog!” So, I quickly did a screen capture and voila, we have Compaq/HP’s mistake captured for all to see, haha.

So, do you think they have a proofreader or do they just rely on their spell checkers? This is a classic spell checker mistake. The word ‘and’ is spelled correctly, but it’s the wrong word to use in this sentence (‘an’ is the word they were looking for there).

Anyhow, just thought I’d share. Have a great weekend!

I had alluded to the need to capture this picture in a previous post. Thanks to my sister-in-law, I now have a picture of this mistake (thanks Tina!).

Rabbit Trail: Why did Tina have the opportunity to get this picture for me? Unfortunately, she had to go to this grocery store to request a refund for a bag of coffee. Yes, it was this company’s coffee. Tina grinds her own coffee at home. Upon reaching the last bit of coffee beans at the bottom of the bag, she discovered a roasted bug mixed in with her beans. Gross! The question I had was, “I wonder if there was more than one bug” followed by, “Hey, where’s the bug’s head and legs…were they roasted off, or did they get mixed into the bag somewhere else?” At that point, I stopped asking questions. I was also relieved to recall that I had not consumed any coffee over at their house recently, haha. Needless to say, the coffee bean bug was a major turn off. Thankfully, the grocery store refunded her money without any difficulty.

So, back to the picture. Have you caught the mistake? Charity’s should be charities (the correct plural spelling). The apostrophe is a killer for many, many people. Unfortunately, this is a common mistake. Even more unfortunate is that this mistake made it out into the public arena (multiple supermarkets and their own website). Perhaps I should contact them and offer my services?

Why is proofreading important? Here’s a great example of why you need to double check your work. It’s also a good example of a poor printing company. A company who produces material for other organizations really should be responsible enough to double check the content they are printing. Five minutes of time reviewing the project probably would have eliminated an error that has now been reported and scoffed at nationwide.

WESTLAKE, Ohio – A Cleveland-area principal says he’s embarrassed his students got proof of their “educaiton” on their high school diplomas.

Westlake High School officials misspelled “education” on the diplomas distributed last weekend. It’s been the subject of mockery on local radio.

Principal Timothy Freeman says he sent back the diplomas once to correct another error. When the diplomas came back, no one bothered to check things they thought were right the first time.

The publisher has reprinted the diplomas a second time and sent them to the 330 graduates.

Source: Yahoo News 6/9/08

By the way, if I were the principal…I’d find another printer for next year’s diplomas. I wonder what the first error was that caused them to be sent back…