Promoterin'

Offender: Houston Chronicle. (Dean Ralph Wiggum doffs his mortarboard to eagle-eyed reader and proud UHD English major Monica Quintanilla!)

Juxtaposition Theatre: Learn How Not to Do as We Do

Offender: Mediabistro.com email.

Now " That's ' Some " Emphasis ' !

Offender: Juniors (Junior's?) Bar & Grill, Albany, NY. July 26, 2009.

[Editor FAIL] Sorry, Ralph

As K. A. Laity pointed out in our very first comment, I originally had misspelled Dean Wiggum's first name as Ralf in this blog's header. Thank you, Kate; please accept our very first Editor WIN.

(Beginning students should note that "Sorry, Ralph" and "Sorry Ralph" are not equivalent.)

[New Yorker] Mistakes Were Made

Offender: The New Yorker, March 23, 2009

[Forbes] This Does (Not Make) Sense

Offender: Forbes.com

"First" Post!

Are you like me?

• Did you have the fundamentals of grammar drilled into your head in grade school?
• Did you ever win a spelling bee?
• Did your understanding of English increase when you began studying a foreign language?
• Have you grown increasingly dismayed at "old media"-types who complain about the unprofessionalism of writers on the Internet (or, god help us, "in the blogosphere") but who publish prose that would make Sister Rita slap their knuckles if they had written it in seventh grade?
  
• Do you find yourself stifling a shouted lecture to the world every time you see misused quotation marks, apostrophes, or commas?
• Do you shout that lecture anyway, even if no one is there to listen?

If so, then this is the blog for you. You know the score. You don't need to be told why a piece of writing isn't clear. You already know. And you have the ulcers to prove it.
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Some background:

All good writers know that the hardest text to proofread or copy-edit is the one you yourself have written. That's why proofreaders and editors exist. Mistakes in spelling, grammar, or punctuation can make both writers and their publishers look like amateurs. Confused assertions lead to confused readers. A textbook which includes, without irony, the equation "2 +2 = 5" is not one I would want placed in front of future engineers. I like my bridges built to last, thank you very much.

Language, of course, is not mathematics. It is not an exact science; it is a living thing, adapting over time. I know this. I have lived through HEL (a "History of the English Language" class), have studied Old and Middle English, and am well-versed in 1ee7. But dammit, clarity matters. Confusion can run rampant without it.

To illustrate, I present Exhibit A: The Simpsons, episode 3F16, "The Day the Violence Died." Upon learning that lawyer Lionel Hutz expects a $1000 retainer to take on a case, a rightly indignant Bart Simpson produces Hutz's own newspaper advertisement:Hutz's reply? "Oh, they got this all screwed up." He then re-edits the ad:Editing makes a difference. Clarity matters.
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An important point:

I know that that the homemade signs you find posted at laundromats or stapled to telephone poles often contain grammatical or typographical "whoopsies." That's lamentable, true, but it's not what we're all about here at Editor FAIL. Our examples will be drawn from professionally produced prose (PPP), published by Those Who Should Know Better.
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To sum up:

Consider this blog to be our special place, a place where we safely may vent our frustration to like-minded souls who understand our pain. Should you discover any excruciating examples of editorial oversight in PPP, please let us know at editorfail@gmail.com.

"Happy" reading!