Truth is Funnier Than Fiction

Excerpt from Chapter 2, "To Err is Human"

True story in a family-owned party store: Two clerks called in sick on a Saturday morning when the family knew they were going to have an extremely busy day, so the father, who was now retired, came in to work. The first thing he did was make new signs for the store's glass-enclosed deli case by writing the name of each food in all capital letters. Seven hours later, one of the clerks screamed in horror. The new sign for the crab salad read, CRAP SALAD. "No wonder we haven't sold any crab salad all day!" she said.

Call it human nature, but most people don't double-check their hand-written work or their computer-typewritten work, even when creating important documents like resumes. When I first began freelancing full time, I wrote resumes to earn extra cash. I ran an ad in my local newspaper that read, "A bad resume won't get you a better job. For a great resume, call (my phone number)." Boy, did I get some bad resumes. Job seekers who had mailed dozens of resumes and hadn't had any luck getting a single job interview called me and mailed resumes to me that were littered with typos. One man spelled his own name wrong. His last name was "Miller" and at the top of his resume, he had spelled it with three ls, "Milller." Another man was sending out resumes that listed as his mailing address an apartment he had lived in two years ago. Hmm. Maybe that's why he hadn't received any reply letters. Then there was the guy who got his own job title wrong. He was a pre-press technician at a printing company, and he listed his current job at the top of his resume as "Stripper." He wasn't a male stripper, but that's probably what the human resources managers who glanced at his resume thought, right before they threw it away.

Newspapers are notorious for publishing funny errors. In a review of the Star Wars movie, "Attack of the Clones," a Seattle-Post Intelligence movie critic wrote, "The press was not given an advance peak at the film." I think he wanted a "peek" at the movie before reviewing it. An Associated Press headline in the Idaho Statesman read, "Charge dismissed in wreckless-flying case." An airline pilot was brought on charges for not wrecking the plane? I don't think so. A New York Times article which announced that Walter Isaacson, the editorial director of Time, Inc., was named the new head of CNN, stated that Isaacson "will take the reigns" instead of "will take the reins" of the prestigious news gathering organization. Sounds like a real dictator. And a restaurant review in the Jackson Citizen-Patriot said, "a piano player was tinkling in the background." He was probably tickling the piano keys softly, but the review made it sound like something the health department should investigate.

Perhaps because information is so easy to post on the Internet nowadays, many typos and errors can be found online. A Yahoo! news headline announced, "U.S. Clams to Have Linked Attack Suspects to bin Laden." Mollusks are gathering new intelligence about the war on terrorism? Let's use people instead. I saw a job wanted posting on an employment Web site from a "stay-at-mom" who wanted to find work she could do in her home. She probably won't get any proofreading offers. And an Internet advertising banner that touted an online intelligence test was headlined, "Intelleginece Test." Not even close.

No one is perfect, not even the big-time editors of national magazines. I received a hand-written note from the editor of a national writing magazine after sending her a query letter for an article I titled, "Seven Things a Freelance Writer Should Never Say." In her note, she thanked me for the "7 things a writter should never say" query and said she would keep it under consideration. The editor of a writing magazine actually misspelled the word "writer."

Even if all the words are spelled correctly, a writer can make a grammer gaffe simply by misplacing a phrase in a sentence. An Associated Press report sent out on the wire service to newspapers across the nation described an accident as follows: "A short time later, 16 people were injured when Grubman backed into a crowd waiting to enter the club at high speed." Now I don't know if those people really were planning to run into the nightclub at high speed - were they really thirsty? - but the report suggests it, nonetheless.

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