Spellcheck please! Shining a light on typos

Typos happen.
They're everywhere — in the newspaper, online, on signs like this one, which I spotted the other day in Warren:


In newspapers, once an error is in print, it's there forever — and having written for a daily newspaper, I can say that I am embarrassed when I see errors like these recent ones: "peddling" instead of pedaling a bicycle; "boarder" instead of border collie; "mantle" instead of fireplace mantel; "bailed" instead of baled hay; "Dougway" instead of Dugway Bridge — even Narragansett Bay where what is being described is the Atlantic Ocean! You can't get much bigger than that in terms of getting it wrong. You can't fix a printed page, but you can fix online mistakes — and that's just, ahem, one more advantage of the new media age.

With a little effort, you can also fix errors on public signs — shine a little light on the errors of our ways, so to speak. In my Posts of May 22 and March 30, I lauded the transcontinental efforts of Somerville's Jeff Deck and his TEAL initiative to fix sign typos across America. At the end of his trip, he invited readers of his typo blog to go forth and multiply, fixing typos where we find them.

So I did!
Yesterday, I fixed my very first sign typo. Or, more accurately, I got it fixed. I called the church attached to the sign above, and pointed out the error. And they fixed it, although not without some defensiveness. Hey, I understand: I write for a newspaper! Typos happen: The important thing is to learn from them. And then fix them!


I've already submitted my fix to Deck's contest, hoping to win a TEAL T shirt, winner to be decided June 15. I'll keep you Posted.

Typo eradication: An impassible dream?

Readers of this blog may recall the Post of March 30, in which I lauded the pan-American typo-eradication expedition of Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson. Beginning from Deck's home in Somerville, MA, the duo criss-crossed the country, hunting down and fixing typos in signs wherever they found them. Sadly, despite my heartfelt invitation to visit typo-rich Rhode Island, the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) road trip never made it here. Last Sunday, Deck posted to the TEAL blog from his Somerville dining room, having skipped little Rhody completely.

He's tired, I'm sure, and perhaps just a little bit cranky after the arduous three-month journey. In his final Post, Deck implored readers to go forth and multiply his efforts by finding and fixing sign errors on our own.

He says he doesn't want to see any more photos of typos unless we ourselves have fixed them per his guidelines. On June 15, he will pick a winner of the Best Typo Fix and put it on his blog. The winner will receive a free TEAL T-shirt.

I'm here for you, Jeff. I'll carry the torch. I'll do what I can to fix Rhode Island's typos, though the road (photo below in Charlestown, RI) seems "impassible," when it should be "impassable."

The typo road goes on forever . . .

Got typos?

Yesterday's Globe had a story about two guys who are traveling across the country on a mission to eradicate errors of spelling and grammar on signs. They started in Boston a month ago and made a big loop through the fertile typo ground of the South, fixing mistakes for free wherever they found them. This month, they're going up the West Coast, and then they'll be back in New England in late May.

I applaud them and only hope they'll visit Rhode Island on the return trip since they bypassed us on the way out. Perhaps they felt the smallest state was too large a task to take on right out of the starting gate?

We have a lot of problems here, although one that used to give me a headache has been fixed. That was the sign on a bicycle shop on the East Bay Bike Path that said: "Your on the right path with us!" But there are many more, such as the sign outside the Italian market on Federal Hill that announces they have "Delicasies." Crescent Park signs are always being spelled "Cresent," and, well, the list goes on and on.

Readers, please send in here any nominees you've spotted, and I'll send a compilation of your requests to these guys, who call themselves TEAL, the Typo Eradication Advancement League. Their web site and blog are illuminating, allowing readers to follow them on their nonjudgmental journey—

"to stamp out as many typos as we can find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. We do not blame, nor chastise, the authors of these typos. It is natural for mistakes to occur; everybody will slip now and again. But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling, and the time has come for the crisis to be addressed."

I'd just like to suggest that once they've corrected all the country's signs, they might take a look at menu misspellings (Caesar salad and arugula seem to be perpetual challenges) and song lyrics. Can anyone listen to Paolo Nutini's "Last Request" without cringing? Hey, Paolo— You're cute, but why would she lie down next to someone so grammatically challenged as to say Lay instead of Lie?)

Bad boys: Whatcha gonna do?

Yesterday was a fine day for strolling around Providence, and as Retired Guy and I headed into the free-for-all intersection that separates the mall from downtown, there before us was one of the city's finest, sitting alert but relaxed astride a police edition, V Twin, 103 cubic inch, 1690 cc Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle, shiny black like his leather jacket, boots and helmet.
Eddie Malloy has been a Providence cop for 20 years, a motorcycle officer for many of them, and he loves his bike. Now, chatting about the absolute craziness of the intersection we were waiting to cross, we all saw a gang of saggy-pants youths cavorting merrily across eight lanes of exiting Interstate traffic. The kids were heading into downtown.
Malloy gave them a perfunctory bleep on his siren, but they ignored it.
"See?" we all said, shaking our heads. "No respect."
"You know, it's just like Martin Luther King said," added Malloy— "It's not the color of a man's skin; it's the content of his character."
He had just two minutes left on his shift.

Then, just like that, he gets a message on his radio that there had been a robbery in the mall — a cell phone stolen by a gang of saggy-pants youths.
"You can't outrun the radio!" says Malloy, revving up the Harley and turning on his siren to officially part the Red Sea of the city's certified-insane intersection.

We had been heading to the Biltmore anyway. Just as we got there, there was Malloy, along with a member of the mounted command, a detective, a park ranger and a couple of other cops. They already had two Saggy Pants in the patrol car and were waiting for a female cop to arrive to pat down a girl who'd been one of the group.
It appeared, Malloy told us, that she had just been hanging around them and wouldn't be charged.

"Look at that," he was telling us and the detective (while behind his back one of the other cops scooped up a pile that the horse had left and pretended to drop it near the Harley) — "Two arrests in two minutes with no paperwork."
Then Malloy got back on his bike and drove off home.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.

See motorcycles like Malloy's at special event nights held at Ocean State Harley Davidson in Warwick.

Wild night

Here on the pine plantation, we measure windstorms by the number of pine limbs downed in back of the house. Last night was pretty wild, but it was only a Two Limb Night, thank goodness. Such nights always remind me of a gravestone I once saw in an old Rhode Island cemetery on which was written "Kill'd By a Pine Tree."
Living as close to 100-foot pine trees as I do, it kind of makes you appreciate every day.
Retired Guy has already got out the chainsaw and is busy cutting up the morning's bounty for next year's firewood, making lemonade out of pine limbs, I guess you might say.