I See Illiterate People

There's a bit of graffiti in the men's room in my library that delights me. In one of the stalls, someone drew a ghost saying the word "Boo!" Right next to that, someone added, "Wow, you literally scared the crap out of me!"

I love that exchange because it's a rare instance of someone using the word "literally" correctly, and not, as the current trend seems to be, as a synonym for "really" or "very." (For example, when someone says, "I literally blew my top" when what they really meant was, "I really blew my top.")

I've been feeling very anal with regard to language lately, since I seem to notice typos and misuse of language all over the place. I feel like the grammar equivalent of that kid in The Sixth Sense: I see typos. They're everywhere, and most of them don't even know they're typos.

For example, our library is hosting a bunch of posters in celebration of Black History Month. Since I'm on the Diversity Education Committee, I volunteered to hang them. When the posters arrived, they looked great: large glossy foam board pictures of various African Americans with a small text about who they were/are. Then, as I was hanging them, I made the mistake of actually reading the text. Here are some of the errors I noticed:

• Rosa Parks was not a "42 year seamstress" during the famous bus scene; she was a 42-year-old seamstress.
• W.E.B. DuBois was not a "civil rights leaders", he was a civil rights leader.
• Louis Armstrong was not "still with in band" when he died, he was still with his band.
• And the granddaddy of typos: Phyllis Wheatley's book did not have a forward "sign by" John Adams, she had a forward signed by John Adams.
  

That last example strikes me as particularly illiterate; something written by someone who's just sounding out the words and doesn't read. It really bothers me. These posters were designed and approved by the college's public relations department, and it bugs me that people whose job it is to present the public face of the college would fail to catch such errors. When I pointed out the errors, they re-did the posters, at a cost of several hundred dollars.

Then this week I received an email from our human resources department. They're advertising a new position. Ironically, it's a position as a remedial English instructor. The job description reads, "...three year's of teaching experience..."

I thought of pointing out this "typo" to the person who sent the email, but then I think, I don't want to be that guy. The one who's always correcting other people. If they find a remedial English instructor who doesn't notice that mistake, I guess it'll be a match made in Heaven. Literally.

[And for my irony-impaired readers, that was an intentional misuse of the word "literally."]