The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [88]
“No, listen,” he almost shouted, pointing an accusing finger in such a practiced motion that, for a second, I thought he might be Bill O’Reilly in inked-up disguise. “I wrote that sign, and it’s right. First I thought the word had a k in it, so I checked the dictionary. It said renown is a word—so it’s right.”
“Oh yeah, of course renown is a word,” I agreed. “It’s just that renown is the noun and renowned is the adjective. If you’d said she was a person of international renown, that’d be one thing, but internationally renowned needs the -ed.”
“What school do you teach at?” he replied. I couldn’t be certain if he was checking my credentials to see if they outranked his use of the dictionary, or merely mocking me.
I settled for my standard response: “We’re going around the country correcting typos.” For proof, I reached for a TEAL business card, which he immediately told me he didn’t need—because he wasn’t changing it. I wondered what would have happened if I’d said, “Actually, my dear fellow, I teach Platonic rhetoric and postmodern orthographic theory at the University, but I’ve deigned to give a guest lecture at your risible local college.” Would he have stuttered into an appreciative tone and asked me to proofread his entire tent—if I could spare the time? Somehow I doubted it.
I winced from his rebuke and trudged onward up the dusty track, Benjamin at my side. I hacked some grit out of my lungs and commented that we couldn’t do worse than that ugly scene. When will I learn not to say things like that?
We got a much more polite rejection of our offer to fix the next problem we saw. In yet another tent, a man in a smart beret allowed us to handle a small apostrophe problem after recognizing us from one of the news stories last month. Had our fortunes changed? Alas, he would prove to be the radical exception for TEAL’s day at the fair—and I’m not just talking in terms of fashion sense.
A triply erroneous sign taunted us from its lofty position upon a tent. Vidalia is not a word with an obvious spelling, especially if you don’t know how to pronounce it (hence, “Vadelia”—or even “Vidaria,” as I noticed in a produce market in Hoboken), and vinaigrette is moderately challenging, so I could see how “vinegarette” had happened. But “tomatos”? A ladder! a ladder! my sidekick for a ladder! As we continued to breathe in kicked-up dirt and tried not to rub too much against our many neighbors, I spied the promise of Island Noodles, complete with the authentic taste of “Hawiian Island Sauce”. Benjamin immediately rated this typo correction as a high degree of difficulty. The sign had been placed within the tent, up past the grill where they cooked their Noodles until the food achieved maximum tastiness, or, in island parlance, broke da mouth. We headed around the tent to where an underling wandered around without a clear purpose. Woe betide the traveler attempting to merge onto the road paved with good intentions, which too often forces you back down the exit ramp. Though we’d tried not to perturb the chef himself, the underling merely turned and began to relay our request. The busy Noodler raised his beefy head from that steaming grill and aimed a broad smile directly at us. Then, interrupting the question being passed to him, he provided a single word in a flat baritone: “No.” His eyes sparked with glee in the instant the word popped out, as if this was the most fun he’d have all day, though, granted, it probably was. His head fell back into the steam, our existence forgotten; the underling returned to his hesitant circles at the back of the tent.
“I once fell in love with a girl from New York,” Benjamin said.
“Oh yeah, and how’d that work out?”
“I got rejected. Pretty