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I occasionally nitpick about, and point out typos in ads. But I do realize that stuff happens.
It certainly happens to me, though I do try to be extra attentive. And while I won't usually confuse "their," they're and "there," when it comes to finer grammatical points, I am sure I often mix my metaphors, split my infinitives and in general mortify my old PS 99 principal (not "principle") Fletcher.
I have no excuse, so naturally I will offer one. I write solo and usually on deadline. And the truth is, I am usually delighted to just get the damn blog finished and posted, just as, to be honest, when I check out a print ad of mine, the first thing I look for is that it has indeed run. I figure that if it actually appears, that puts me way ahead of the game. After that I can worry about typos, reproduction and placement.
But I do assume that when New York City prints something, there must be hundreds of people who make certain it contains no mistakes, since the audience is so large, and they probably don't want to embarrass Mayor Bloomberg, who I imagine has a low threshold for error.
So when I saw a sign inside the front of a Manhattan bus that stated, "For passenger safety, Federal law prohibits operation of this vehicle when anyone is standing forard of the white line," I figured it was a black swan; an unexpected and exceptionally rare error that happens once in the proverbial blue moon.
Until last week, when I spotted this beauty:
Truth is, I had seen that sign many times. Truth is, I can't believe that the MTA doesn’t have spell check. And though I am not certain the Mayor does indeed read my blog, at least on a regular basis, I bet someone will point this out to him.
So, be careful out there. It may not be the Mayor. But someone is watching.
Got the idea?
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