From a Rural King circular.
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No job too small
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Homonym accident
By Michael Leddy at 11:25 AM
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“Who are we as a country?”
From a Rural King circular.
Related post
No job too small
By Michael Leddy at 11:25 AM
comments: 7
Homonyn?
How fitting that in posting about vowels I should mess up consonants! Now corrected. Thanks, Greg and Kris.
I usually quote William Stafford at this point. His epigraph for a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry said something like, "When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson in grammar seems an impertinence.
Forgive our impertinence. ;)
Sorry to chime in so predictably with another Orwell anecdote, but I'm reading Bernard Crick's biography and have got to the parts involving Orwell's brief time in the 30s as a teacher at a so-called "practical school." Years later, his students remember that their instructor "once offered sixpence from his own pocket as a prize for anyone who could stop a ludicrous misspelling in the local laundry window." Someone, I think, owes you a great deal of money, Michael.
Stefan, you've got me wondering what that misspelling could have been. "Laundery"?
This problem of committing errors while commenting on them appears contagious: the operative word in the quote was supposed to be "spot" not "stop." Ugh! Typos and misspellings were evidently an on-going problem at the local laundry, and evidently, you and I can relate. Perhaps we should send one another sixpence (adjusted for inflation, of course).
I wouldn't have caught your typo, Stefan — I thought "stop" made perfect sense, with a student explaining the problem to the launderers and getting them to fix it.
I think there's also something about comments in general that inspires typos. I make them often.
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