Teaching Kids Spelling? Beware Public Typos

This week, Mildly Inappropriate Mommy is putting up her feet and letting a man do the work. (Ladies, can I hear an “amen”?)

With the academic year in full swing, I decided to make this week’s post an ode to spelling and grammar by asking Jeff Deck, the co-author of “The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time,” if he wouldn’t mind sending me some examples of kid- and parent-related typos he found during a cross-country journey he took with pal and co-author Benjamin D. Herson not long ago. Below, here’s what this eagle-eyed FOMIM (friend of Mildly Inappropriate Mommy) had to say:

In Rockville, Md., a flyer at a local diner offered a lineup of activities for kids; they would have “a Coloring Contests” and would be “making Rocket Ship.”  After ascertaining from the management that there’d be only one coloring contest, but multiple rocket ships, Benjamin amended the poster accordingly.

I was pretty sure that this storefront sign, found in Metter, Ga, was created by kids, so we weren’t about to try to fix the mistake here.  It was just reassuring to know that they carried the filp fops that I need.

(Jeff Deck)

A display in a Cleveland museum, which was geared toward younger visitors, described one student’s “eight-grade science project.”  Such a tiny omission, just one letter, but nobody calls herself an eight-grader.

A store in the Underground Atlanta mall in Atlanta offered a variety of discount goods, but how much faith are you going to put in their “Pregnacy Test”?

(Jeff Deck)

Here’s a Mother’s Day special apostrophe typo from beautiful Bennington, Vt.  Yes, I know it’s a free pancake, but it’s an error only a mother could love.

(Jeff Deck)

“The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time” by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson, comes out in paperback Tuesday, Oct. 4.  It is also available in hardcover and as an e-book.