A Dirty Dozen

My mom loves Cape Cod. It's her favorite vacation spot, ranking slightly ahead of Michigan's Mackinac Island. She visits the Cape on an almost-annual basis, and she is on the mailing lists of many Cape Cod businesses. One of those establishments, Red Cottage Restaurant, e-mailed Mom a couple of days prior to Thanksgiving. I'm calling out the restaurant, located in South Dennis, for a dozen reasons.

1. Why is a.m. necessary after the 7? The line above it notifies us that these are morning hours. If you omit a.m., we're not going to think it's 7 p.m. If you want to keep a.m., delete morning in the preceding line.

2. Why "12 noon"? It's redundant. Use 12 p.m. Or noon.

3. Wouldn't it be better if greetings were replaced with wishes in the first sentence?

4. Why is happy capitalized in the first sentence? Would you capitalize happy in the sentence I am a happy person when the Gators win? Of course not.

5. The first sentence's clause, which starts with the word where, doesn't work. What is "where we look forward to seeing all of our Red Cottage family this holiday season for breakfast and lunch" modifying? As written, that clause modifies "Chef Dan and the staff," and that doesn't make any sense. Ending the first sentence after staff, deleting where and beginning sentence No. 2 with we would be one solution. Others exist.

6. Why the extra character space between Cottage and family? Aren't we supposed to come together during the holidays?

7. Not technically an error, but I don't think the first sentence deserves an exclamation point. A period will do.

8. A minor problem in the second sentence is the capital N in noon. Why? It's not a proper noun.

9. A major problem in the second sentence is the conflicting information. At the top of its e-mail announcement, Red Cottage alerts us that it'll be open from 7 to 12, yet two lines later we've gained an hour. Do you open at 6 or 7 on Thanksgiving? Perhaps we can split the difference and open at 6:30.

10. Delete morning or a.m. in the second sentence. For a more detailed explanation, see No. 1.

11. Not technically an error, but I don't think the second sentence deserves an exclamation point. A period will do.

12. Take a gander at the last word. You've got one too many g's in Thanksgiving, Red Cottage. Geez!

Fine-tuning Required

Pictured here is a portion of a story, posted on Knoxville.com in January 2009, about friends and family marking the one-year anniversary of a young actor's death. My friend Lindsay, of IAMNOTASTALKER, tuned me in to this one. Thank you, Lindsay.

I'm reading the image Lindsay sent. Looking good, looking good... There doesn't appear to be — stop the music! There it is, near the end of the second paragraph. See it?

The stereo in my beat-up '93 Accord is unable to read CDs anymore, and its AM/FM playback is replete with static and crackling, yet the stereo I'm reading about in this article has the ability to detach from its carcass, if you will, and self-park. Impressive!

When I looked at the full online article, it had five reader comments, including this one from someone identified as EducateNow:

Glad to hear the car stereo was parked in the graveyard. Wonder where the rest of the car was?

Despite EducateNow's remark, which was posted the same day the article appeared, a correction has yet to be made. On the Knoxville website, that car stereo remains parked in the graveyard. I wonder if the strains of Led Zeppelin still echo in the cemetery trees.

Ooh, it makes me wonder. Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

On a Stakeout

As Detroit police search for a potential serial killer, I undertake the far easier task of searching this USA Today article for mistakes. Searching, searching...

Found one!

Shift into high gear and make your way to the end of this Motor City article to spot it. In the last paragraph, the word is should have been deleted or replaced with has. Either that, or reached should have been changed to reaching.

Before I target my next typo, I'd like to throw a woohoo the writer's way for correctly pluralizing attorney general. That's a tricky one!