I continue to say “Studebegger” instead of “Studebaker” and my wife corrects me every time and asks why I say it that way. I say that’s the way I’ve always said it since my first encounter in 1953. It was fun going through the “Studebegger” Museum and she finally gave up for the day.
I still think “Cadillac converter” takes the cake 
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I hear that all the time at the ol scrapyard. “How much can I get for this Cadillac converter? It came off of a Toyota.”
Hmmm…You’d think it would’ve come off of a Cadillac.
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The conversion wasn’t complete yet. 
I have friends who are good writers who tried the contracting thing. You get paid when, and if, your article gets published. That might be next month. It might be next year. Or they might decide not to publish it (through no fault in your writing) in which case you just worked for free.
And even when you get published, it can take months for the publication to finally get around to cutting you a check.
It doesn’t take a good writer long to say “screw this” and go do something with a more reliable stream of income, and that leaves the dopes who got C’s in remedial English class to do the work.
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That’s “lye berry”, a basic ingredient in soap.
It’s also the local accent showing up. Regional accents aren’t nearly as prevalent as they used to be. Go to or near any big city, and everyone’s accent is the same. Too much homogeneity, IMO. My wife’s grandmother used to wrench her hands in the zinc. Her mother carried a pockeybook. This stuff’s great, and I miss it.
C means average though, which means the majority. Maybe not unhinged brilliant or dumb as a rock, but just ordinary. Don’t we really want more just ordinary folks writing articles? Ya know, like down to earth?
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I don’t see how doing your job well and getting average grades in school are related. I have spellcheck and a grammar checker embedded in MS Word, and I write a lot of technical documents at work. Still, I check them at least once to make sure the document reads properly and that I conveyed the points I wanted to make. For a particularly important document, I will review it the next day to make sure I conveyed my message appropriately.
My Father finished 8th grade and my Mother 10th. They were both quite literate. My stay at home mom taught me to read when I was 4 years old. My 2nd grade class went to the school “lieberry”. I chose a book to check out but the “lieberrian” said “Oh honey that book is for 5th or 6th graders”. My teacher overheard, opened the book, and pointed to a paragraph for me to read aloud. I did and the “lieberrian” said “Oh honey you can check out any book you want”. I still read everything. Even the 2 least read publications in existence. My vehicle owner manual and the state driver manual!
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No. The war on expertise and intelligence is stupid.
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“Add vs Ad” indeed.
I recently had a brief email communication with a local graphic designer to whom I had sent four photographs I’d created for an artist client. The graphic designer’s message said that she was sending me the “proof for the ‘add’” that she was working on for my client. I was pleased with the proof…except that one caption ON THE PROOF had misspelled the name of my client’s quirky art piece as follows:
“Purple Peaople Eater”
@John-Bryson Wait a minute guys, someone posts something innocuous for the first time and one of you gotta flag him? I understand you don’t like old posts being resurrected but geez, have a little tolerance.
I still consider the back to school ad in the paper that was a “break special” as kind of a favorite. Prolly the guy got a C in remedial English. Ah ha ha ha.
Still I think the “rack opinion” is coming in a close second.
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I’m a freelance writer covering just two genres. Proofreading for online content is almost non-existent. Car Talks’ feature stories are one of the exceptions. Most sites I publish at don’t employ proofreaders because there is no revenue to support the work. I use Grammarly software to help make my stuff better, but I still find typos when I look back at it. If you didn’t pay for the content, the chances it was reviewed by an editor are almost nil. What I find more amazing is the lack of any meaningful qualifications to write on a topic. For example, Consumer Reports’ associate health editor has no background or education in medicine or public health. Her prior job experience was “student.” And Consumer Reports is a paid content publication.
The post actually spelled out the curse the first time and the system wouldn’t let me un-flag it once I cleaned it up for the family-friendly forum.
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I knew CR was cruising downhill when they bought Consumerist and didn’t make any editorial changes to stop the breathless idiotic sensationalism and the every-other-day mass fights about whether or not warehouse clubs have the right to check your basket on the way out the door.
Seems the fall hasn’t stopped in the interim.
More on topic, I enjoyed (read: got irritated that someone was paid money for this) an aviation article I read awhile back that talked about a service being a “rest bite” from the day.
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My mother was a high school English teacher and was always correcting my grammar. One time, when she was paddling me, I looked up at her and said, “That don’t hurt, do it some more”. I got paddled again and twice as hard for using bad grammar. She ‘learned’ me a lesson I didn’t forget. The next time she paddled me, I remembered to say “That does not hurt, do it some more”.
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You’re forgiven. I jumped the gun again.
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Lenny Bruce and George Carlin paid dearly for our right to speak in vulgar, suggestive terms and today 10 year olds make old sailors blush. I’m flabbergasted at that post being censored.
Lenny Bruce and George Carlin paid dearly for our right to speak in vulgar, suggestive terms without being punished by the government. They didn’t have any desire to restrict owners of private operations from dictating what can/can’t be said on their property. If they didn’t like being restricted to “family friendly” routines by a given comedy club, they simply didn’t perform there.
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You can’t fix stupid but ignorance can be cured with education.
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