This One's for Karen

First a quick anatomy lesson gleaned from googling for approximately five minutes (my reasoning behind this will become clear at post’s end):

The human brain is divided into four main lobes, the frontal, parietal, occipital, and, finally, the temporal lobe, the lobe that I would like to concentrate upon today. According to current scientific research, the temporal lobe is responsible for emotional responses, hearing, speech, and memory. It is very important in processing the way we understand language and is therefore responsible for a big part of our ability or lack thereof to spell words.

Now I have always been a stickler when it comes to spelling words correctly. I have also held the right-or-wrong belief that a person is born with the ability to naturally spell words the right way or the misfortune to be eliminated in the bee’s first round. (Although I fall into the former category, I am still bitter over my second grade spelling bee final round loss. The word was handkerchief; I left out the “d.” I blame everyone who spoke that word to me before that date and have pronounced it differently and properly ever since.)

In today’s age of Microsoft Word and the spell-check which accompanies it, I find it downright lazy, asinine, ridiculous, and puzzling how any typed document can contain misspelled words. That is, with the exception of the transposed from/form, the bane of my husband’s document writing existence. I assume “professional” sign makers, in the course of a day’s work, utilize some similar widget which performs the spell-check function and, therefore, should have no excuse for misspelling signage words. Yet, I come across them constantly, almost every time I venture away from the farm and even in teachers’ announcements that have been sent home with my children. It never ceases to amaze/disgust me.

Last week, I discovered the king of misspelled professional signs. The level of sheer bemusement I received from the irony this square on sticks contains astonishes me to no end. I realize this exposes me as the incredible geek that I am but it was just too good to keep to myself.

All Hail the King::

Comments

[Sylvia]

Do you remember that after your father saw a sign advertising "new patotes"for sale, we never EVER called them potatoes again!!!
The nut doesn't fall far from the tree...
SCN

[Debbi]

Awesome. :) My mother's an editor. I've picked up her habit of checking signage. It's nice to know she and I aren't alone in our habit. :) The worst spelling I've encountered from the professional world was IBM's marketing department employees. Trust me, their systems had spell check. It still makes me laugh. :)

[Shell]

The largest ever? Google yesterday replaced the the second "g" in their logo for Valentine's Day. However, they left off the "l". All day they were "googe." This is what happens when you only allows Phd levels to work for you as I don't believe there is a spelling exam for your doctorate. I have a screen shot if you didn't get to see it.