Sunday, February 24, 2008

"Spot The Mistake" Contest Results

I used to pride myself in grammatical correctness, but I am humbled by the responses to the contest. When I first had the idea to do it, it was because I'd found one - ONE - typo, and instead of correcting it, I turned it into a challenge for everyone else. Unfortunately, my post was apparently riddled with errors. Who knew? I am definitely slacking...

Before I announce the winner, I'll respond to the suggested errors (and please take these comments as they were intended...feel free to insert a "LOL" after each one, k?):

1. Fiskars was misspelled. Yep - it sure was!
2. There should not be an apostrophe in bad's. Yep - it should have been bads.
3. The word it's should be its (not possessive.) YES - And this is the one I wanted to correct!
4. There should not be a "the" before SU (in 2nd to last paragraph). Yep, again.
5. In the first paragraph, it would be swore off them instead of swore them off. Hmmm ... maybe. I guess I could have said, "I swore off going to those stores." I think I'll let this one go, though (hey, it's my blog!). It is important to note, however, that if that statement had been properly written, it would go something like, " ... I stopped shopping at those stores ..." Proper people do not swear. :-)
6. Anywho should be two words. NOT! It's slang for "anyhow", so I did it on purpose. Nice try, though.
7. Durn should be darn. Yes, quite true, if I had not spelled it that way on purpose. :-)
8. Naive should have a semicolon after it instead of a comma. Yep - right about that!
9. The word(s) scrap book should be one word. Maybe. I have seen it both ways, and I struggle with my sentence construction each time I use it. I'll give this one a half point (honorable mention.)
10. And last, but not least: the fish isn't really a Cod? Well, for this one I defer to the label on the side of the stamp that says (and I quote): "Cod".

My non-scientific selection process is: The winner will be the first person to have identified an error that I deem a true error (my blog, remember?). Therefore, the following people have won:

Jackie, for catching the Fiskars and the possessive bads.
Kentucky Girl (A grammar geek you say? I say: a woman after my own heart!), for catching the possessive its.
Linda, for seeing the extra "the" before "SU".
Sheila, for seeing the erroneous comma instead of a semicolon.

Since that's more than one winner, each of you will win ... drum roll, please .... a Studio G Clear Stamp set from my stash! I spent A LOT of money when I cleaned out the Mike's Dollar Spot that day, and they are still in the bag. In my attempt to purge some of my stash, four of them have now found new homes. I ask each of the winners to please email me your snail mail address (send it to lqhanna@gmail.com) and I'll get these right out to you.

Thanks for playing!

And one final note: I am a subscriber to Scott Adams' DNRC newsletter. For the uninitiated, that's Dogbert's New Ruling Class (think Dilbert.) At the end of the newsletter, Mr. Adams includes the usual disclaimers, including the warning to not reply "to the email address this was sent from", or maybe it was "include the email address this was sent to". I am old, it was a long time ago, and I forget. Either way, the sentence ends in a preposition, so I replied, pointing out the error and offering a suggestion along the lines of "it should be from which it was sent, or to which it was sent" (you get the idea.) His response? Two words: common usage. Bah, I say, bah!

End of our grammar lesson; now back to my scrapbook (all one word.)

4 comments:

  1. LOL! Thank you and congratulations to the other winners! How did I miss that erroneous apostrophe in "it's"?? That is sort of thing that makes my eyes cross.

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  2. That was so much fun. Thanks for challenge. Of course, winning didn't hurt either. Yahoo!!!

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  3. Congratulations ladies!

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I'd love to hear what you really think! :-)

PS: I've had to disable Anonymous comments, because the spammers were killing me. If you are unable to comment, please email me your comment and I'll get it posted for you. Sorry. (stoopid spammers)