He's my kind of guy. (Just a little young.)
He's doing what I've always dreamed of doing--correcting public grammar goofs so people don't mistakenly think that the mistake is the reality. While I admire his enthusiasm for the project, though, lessons learned in childhood conflict with my desire to make public people's mistakes:
- Don't deface other's people's property. My siblings and I were taught to treat other people's property with respect. Clearly, marking up people's signs--especially in a permanent way--is defacing property. It's quite possibly even punishable as a misdemeanor or felony, depending upon the value of what is defaced.
- Don't point out when other people are being stupid. This is a hard lesson for me to adhere to sometimes, and I'll admit that this blog occasionally pokes at people who haven't proofread very well. But to physically mark up a sign so that everyone can see the mistake, well, that's equivalent to posting a neon sign that says Stupid Works Here. And frankly, it isn't stupidity that causes people to make grammatical and other mistakes; it's usually simple ignorance of the rules. Why not find a positive way to instruct people instead of making people look stupid for not knowing or understanding the rules? Even people who work with language every day make mistakes and need to look up the occasional rule.
I did, however, relapse about a week ago. My roommate and I were dining in a local Mexican restaurant where I noticed that the whiteboard near the front counter announced the evening's Special's. As we walked up to the counter to pay our separate bills, I made my roommate go first in order to distract the employee at the register while I snuffed out the apostrophe.
At least I didn't deface their property, and removing the offending apostrophe only made them look smarter.
