Wasting Away in GrammarNannyVille

I suppose it's bound to happen. Whatever your passion or trade, you get sucked into it like a nameless horror movie extra into a giant squid. Eventually, the monster of your making has digested you so thoroughly, you don't know what's you anymore and what's the squid.

It's that way for me with copy editing.

All on its own and often against my will, my brain dissects every TV commercial, all product packaging, every sign, and web ad, and spam email like my salary depends on it.

This doesn't mean I myself am Grammar Goddess in my own work-- typo and flaw-free. Oh, no! Would that it were so!...

I can mis-homonym with the best of 'em!..

My prepositions cling to the end of sentences like nobody's business!...

And my infinitives are totally split, baby!

It just means I will look at an ad like the one for Ritz Crackerfuls I saw recently. Its tagline read:

Real Cheese. Real Whole Grain. Real Satisfying.

And my stupid copyediting brain automatically chimed in:

'"'Really.' It's 'Really Satisfying. The recent informal adverb use of 'real' still isn't commonly accepted as a substitute for 'really' and--"

That's when I considered hitting myself on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Perhaps negative reinforcement might do me some good.

In other cracker issues, there was my box of Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits. Now, as far as my personal tastebuds go, Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits are Nature's (or Nabisco's) Most Perfect Food.

I mean, if I were the witch in Hansel and Gretel, I would have totally forsaken the carbs and sugar rush and gone for a stylish cottage of fragrant, savory woven snack crackers.

But Triscuit's marketing copy on that beautiful yellow box made my petty, picayune brain complain.

"We like to think of Soft White Winter Wheat as a cashmere of wheat because of its soft texture and delicious taste."

Now, I don't know about you, but while I love the softness of cashmere almost as much as I love Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits... I personally haven't tasted it.

I do appreciate you, Triscuit People, I truly do-- but your metaphor? It applies to moths.

Then this week I noticed my One-A-Day VitaCraves-- basically Gummi bear vitamins for adult people-- are serving size... two.

The marketing contraditions of taking two One-A-Days daily required another newspapery whack to the nose just to bring me back from GrammarNannyVille.

And last-- because you all already can see the sick life a compulsive copy editor leads...

You know the ads for the Capital One Venture Card with the band of medieval ruffians getting into trouble on the slopes?

Well, in one scene, these Vikings-on-holiday purchase tickets for themselves and beloved livestock for the ski lift.

"Two adults and one goat, please?" Olaf the Impulsive asks.

And every time I hear this, the annoying Brainy Smurf in my head pipes up:

"You know, it would have been so much funnier if they'd said 'kid' instead of 'goat'.

"Like two adults and one child... only it's a baby goat which is also called a 'kid'?

"It's a pun, you see, and so..."

And that's when my inner Brainy Smurf gets tossed on his head. No one likes a Grammar Nanny.

Tell me- is there anything you go compulsive on whether you like it or not?

Beware the Penquins and Other Cases for Proofreading

"Benaughty! Rise you potential," the banner ad exclaims.

I've been chuckling over this for a few days now, and felt compelled to share. It hovers over my Statcounter stats in rotation with other less grammatically free-spirited ads.

The first time I saw it, I just caught it out of the corner of my eye. And the message routed itself from eyeball to the brain, where it hung in that big echoing room with all the windmills... And it whispered...

"Rise you potentialllllll...."

Rise me potential? What the-?!... I stopped what I was doing and raised an eyebrow. Or rised it.

But when I looked up, the panel had rotated over to something else. So typical of potential, really. There and gone in the blink of an eye.

Well, the next day, there it was again. "Rise you potential." The brain processed it right away this time.

And do you know how the Benaughty folks think I can rise me potential? By placing hardcore "adult dating" ads on this blog!

Yup, there's a surprise. Gosh, we'll be rising all sorts of things, won't we?

The actual surprise, I'd say, was that their main site appears fairly well proofread-- because, well, with a lead-up like that, I simply had to check it out and see.

And yessir, there weren't any of those pesky typos detracting from their offer of big money for connecting beloved readers with buxom Scandinavian hotties who are, in all likelihood, sweaty men with comb-overs who answer to the name of "the Dwayne-meister."

(The sweaty men answer to "Dwayne-meister"... not the comb-overs. Just so we're clear.)

So I actually started to feel a little sorry for the Benaughty people. I mean, here they are, wanting to lure in potential potential-risers. And instead they're probably getting a bunch of amused marketing writers, rigid schoolmarms, Grammar Nazis, and out-of-work copy editors looking for employment.

Bummer!

I sympathize, you see, because I have not been without my own share of typos. Why just recently, when we were here at Cabbages waiting for Godot, I got "Hooked on Phonics" somewhere along the way and he went all Godoh on us for about three hours. Before I was enlightened to my error.

I'm also reminded of a craft project an acquaintance was working on. This girl-- we'll call her "Stephanie"-- Stephanie had a boyfriend who loved the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. And so she decided she'd quilt this fine fellow a Penguins-themed blanket for Christmas.

A nifty idea and a gift sure to be appreciated, right?

Well, Stephanie worked long hours on this, crafting it in yellow and black stripes, cutting out each square, each letter, with love and care and nimble fingers...

And then it was complete. Thick, fleecy and beautiful, with lots of hand-done touches, Stephanie finally showcased her work.

"Um... Stephanie?... How do you spell 'penguins'?"

Stephanie's face grew dark. "Er... what?"

"How do you spell 'penguins'?"

"P-E-N-Q-"

"Uhhh.... let me stop you right there, Steph. G."

Stephanie had lost all blood to her head and neck at this point. "Excuse me?"

"It's G. P-E-N-G... U-I-N-S."

She probably would have been better off just quilting, "Go Pens."

So remember, folks--

Whether you're selling money-making schemes involving "hot broads looking for a good time" who are actually B.O.-radiating Dwayne-meisters...

Or whether you're humor blogging about existentialist literature while undercaffeinated...

Or whether you're just trying to create the gift that keeps on giving...

Good proofreading really can be your fiend.

Er... freind. Er...

Beware the Penquins.

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Making a Silk Purse from a Panda's Kung-Fu-Sensitive Auditory Organ

Now you may or may not know that my Real Job-- if we peer out past the field o' Cabbages-- is writing marketing content for businesses. And I choose not to blog about it because:

1.) I like my job and want to keep things separate and

2.) Most of it involves me sitting in front of a computer for ten hours a day. This would not only make a lousy blog post, but a very poorly-rated episode of, say, "24."

Imagine, following me as I save clients from improper grammar and unsubstantiated product claims...

Join me as I process content for corporate legal review, including adding circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, explaining what each one is to get their approval...

In fact, now that I think about it, the only things that would be even remotely similar to "24" would be:

• The short deadlines
• All the typing and frowning at the computer screen
• Me pulling a Chloe and occasionally telling one of my coworkers, "Go away, I'm busy."

We don't even get to say "Keep me posted" very often... Though I think I'll try working that in more.

Anyway, so I don't really talk about my Real Job-- you know, except for those several big paragraphs above. But a recent incident gave me a chuckle which I thought I would share with you today.

Background is, when I'm tasked to write a web site or script, sometimes I don't receive much to work with from the client.

Sometimes I get very little information regarding their companies, their goals, or their products. And sometimes what I do get is the general equivalent of scribbles on a cocktail napkin.

There are some really great clients, mind you. A lot who are really helpful and have everything prepped that I could possibly need to work from. And I do appreciate it. But just as often, I'm doing detective work, online research, asking questions, and generally pulling sentences out of the air.

If Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry ever chose to offer a Professional Writing tract, those students would undoubtedly do very well in my field...

"Accio, Mission Statement!" they would shout. And poof! There would be a nicely-written "About Us" section to add to the beta site.

Well, I had a dream about my work the other night. And I dreamt that I had web site copy to write for a large corporation and the only documentation I had to work from was...

The script for Kung-Fu Panda.

You know-- that new cartoon where Jack Black channels the career of Chris Farley and does the voiceover for an inept, mystic, martial-arts-oriented Chinese bear?

Yup, that's the one.

And in the bizarre world that is my sleeping brain, I didn't even recall thinking it was odd. I DID, however, think:

"Hm-- I have to get this darned web site written in a day, now I have to parse something intelligent out of this Kung Fu Panda script, and I haven't even had time to see the film!...

I wonder if there are any particular sections they expect me to focus on?"

I woke up with the images of cutting and pasting panda-centric action scenes into a Word doc.

Well, naturally, when I got to work, I was feeling a bit better about the day ahead as a whole. I mean, I had some actual sales brochures to leverage for the site I had to write, as well as a decent online database. And it was entirely void of pandas-- giant, red or lesser.

So I know what you're going to ask. You're going to ask now: did you get it done in time? And how did the content turn out?

Well.. er...

I'll keep you posted.

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I hear the pandas watch 24 AND Bruce Lee films over at Humor-blogs.