I’m fastidious about spelling and grammar (as Ray once remarked to me). I try really hard to get it right unless I’m deliberately writing in ‘Linda slang’ (as Dennis S has termed it). I know that I sometimes get it wrong – my Mum will occasionally phone me to tell me of a mistake and I do go back and correct a few every now and again if I spot them. Usually I make them when I’m doing this late at night and/or in a tearing hurry!!!
There are times though, when I wonder how some of the howling bloopers I see are allowed to happen in the first place and why they’re not put right instantly if mistakes do occur.
That’s why I am totally bemused at things like this – the photo above. This sign is in a very well-heeled and very public place – the main stand at Epsom Racecourse – a place where in a matter of a few short weeks (the beginning of June will be here in what seems like a flash), the Queen and many of her relatives, along with thousands of people educated at such bastions of correct English as Windsor and Eton, Oxford and Cambridge and a whole army of supposedly lesser mortals will be filling the space shown above the ‘totepool’. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration because I doubt the Queen or her immediate rellies will be wandering around with the hoi polloi or even anyone educated at O&C!
The masses of race goers who attend this year’s Epsom Derby (probably the most prestigious flat race hosted anywhere in the UK) will find themselves queuing up to pay with the folowing(!!!) cards – interestingly enough, this is such a complete spelling blunder that the Word document that I am typing my text into has automatically changed the spelling to the correct one three times since I started typing.
It’s amazing to think that the sign writer has not been called back to correct his mistake – I wonder how many other people have noticed it and are now having a quiet chuckle at the inability of a large-ish company to get something so fundamental right.
Strangely these things are really important to me (sad but true) – I bought a gardening magazine a couple of weeks ago and in the front of the magazine, the editor has a column. The copy I bought had the most howling grammatical error in it – I’ll never buy it again – to me it feels as though they can’t be bothered to edit and check their text so that doesn’t say much for the likely quality of the content of the magazine.
On another occasion, an Epsom bus was painted with a large ad on its back (for a car dealership if I recall correctly) proclaiming something along the lines of ‘you’re local friendly car dealer’ – ooops – again, it’d make me want to avoid the place rather than go there.
Maybe I’m just a weirdo who is obsessive about these things but for me it’s just too important to ignore.
Still – as you can see – I’m back in Epsom and have been at an all day meeting at the racecourse, including two short presentations by yours truly – both of them completely ‘winged’ as I’ve been so madly busy this week. It’s still good to be back though.
BTW - the slight 'fuzziness' is snow - bbbrrrrrr!!!!
Last year, I was just about at my darkest hour at work!
