A Word to the Wise

Dennis Jerz points out that two men from the Typo Eradication Advancement League have been banned from national parks for making corrections in permanent marker to a hand-painted historical sign. In the era of Microsoft Word the notion of line-editing by making physical corrections to material text may seem anachronistic, but on a cached copy of their website they explain their rationale as follows:

This March through May, we, sworn members of TEAL, will be taking a road trip around the country 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. We believe that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.

According to "Typo 'vigilantes' get probation for vandalism" in the Chicago Sun-Times, the two miscreants received light sentences.

(However, Jerz also points out Jonathan Beecher Field's argument in "Why Doesn't Plagiarism Matter?" that scrupulousness about the integrity of the written word seems to be waning, if the support of recent vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is any measure of the Zeitgeist.)

Virtualpolitik pal Eames Demetrios will need to remember to be careful about his mechanics, grammar, spelling, and usage in the markers that he is leaving to commemorate events in the alternate reality he has created through his Kymaerica project. According to this review, Demetrios is also using PowerPoint to expound about this evolving site-specific narrative.