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(and MEANS 'no')
Mrs. Beartchelor, my Grade 8 English teacher, would be proud of me, the big Carrie Nation of grammatical correctness, wielding my axe (a 1985 Harmony electric model) in the name of precise, persnickety paragraphical perfection (it is a word NOW, okay?).
Perhaps not, but, statistically, she is no longer among us, so she cannot contradict me (yes, ma'am, I remembered to not use a contraction in a written sentence :) ).
Here are some egregious examples I have met that I must share or explode in frustration. So bear with me, as it were (yes, ma'am, I know puns are the lowest form of humour).
(1) (Seen on the sidewalk sign of a restaurant in the downtown core - near a university, military academy AND college, no less - where IS the literacy!?)
"For Patio Seating, See the Hostess' Inside."
Now, maybe it is just me, but this is a lot of unpleasant work just to dine in the open air. Leaving alone fortune-telling-by-entrails implications (I am a gentle grammar panda, not a carnivorous grizzly), I cannot help but reply: 'I rarely carry a speculum, rubber gloves and a penlight with me at lunch, so I think I shall dine indoors.' (Anyway, I have heard The Cramps' "What's Inside A Girl?" a time or two, so I am not curious).
(2) (Seen in a massive font on the book page (shoot me, shoot me now) of the Saturday supplement in my local newspaper)
"Monica Lewinsky Biography Fails to Illicit Much Sympathy."
The word they were looking for was 'elicit', I think. It would be nice to think someone was being clever by substituting in this word, but I have seen far too many of these typos in said rag, including the infuriating "WRONG IT'S/ITS"(honest to God, I don't know why that is hard to figure out - does it belong to something? no apostrophe. Do you mean 'it is'? Apostrophe.).
I wrote a letter to said paper asking if it were deliberate. Never got an answer. :)
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(3) (Not so much grammar or spelling as useage this time)
Alanis - perhaps your television childhood and your teenpop period left you little time for literary studies.
However, a thought. 'Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife' is a sign you should get more cutlery, and not irony.
Searching for the paler skin where the ring was would help you avoid the married man of your dreams.
The lottery ticket-plane crash scene is closer to irony, though I still think it would be required that the actual slip of paper fly into the engines and stall the plane to fully qualify as such.
(4) Some quibbling points from Morrissey's lyrics, a man for whom I had too much time in the past, and for whom I still have an irrational affection (I prefer those who ask me to send them my pillow to be OPEN cushion-biters, though, instead of 'Mary, I'm so beyond terms like 'gay' - oh, GET HER!' flirts).
(a) "It's death for no reason, and death for no reason is murder." ('Meat Is Murder', The Smiths) - you would think, after time spent contemptuously in court over not sharing the means of production, Miss Moz would have picked up SOME legal jargon. That would be man/cow/pig/fishslaughter, not murder.
(b) "...and you can break my spine, but you won't change the way I feel." ('Is It Really So Strange?',The Smiths) - well, yes, 't'would, Stephen - you would no longer feel at all, in all probability.