Copy Editing America

I applaud this man. I think he hits the nail on the head when he said that mistakes breed mistakes.

I realize that a language is an evolving entity, but it still irks me when a word gets added to the dictionary (thus legitimizing it) because it becomes overused incorrectly.

clipped from abcnews.go.com Some of the littlest things are big to Jeff Deck, who is traveling the country in search of mistakes. This 28-year-old Dartmouth graduate is crossing America searching for and correcting typographical errors in public places. "The apostrophe shows up when it's not wanted and is never there when you need it," he said as he walked along Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, finding plenty of typos wherever he looked. "I've always been aware of typos wherever I go," he said dryly. "I figured that it was a national problem." It's all documented on his Web site for The Typo Eradication Assistance League (Teal). clipped from abcnews.go.com He said it is partly a failure of education but also that people have stopped caring about spelling. And, he said, mistakes breed mistakes. When someone sees "strawberry's" in print, they think it's correct. "We try not to be jerks about it," he said. It's just really about going after the errors themselves."