Snow job

Spellcheck isn't always our friend, as this excerpt from a story on disgruntled snowplow workers shows: 

"A union representing about 300 state Department of Transpiration workers has voted to authorize a strike to resolve a dispute over a pay freeze."

Snowplows and transpiration do both involve the movement of water in one form or another, but something tells me the people who run the snowplows work in a different department.

Is that a memorial to our deficiencies?

Today I was reminded of an oldie but a goody. A reporter years ago who was covering the Libby vermiculite health disaster referred in a story to the "statue" of limitations for filing suit. I fixed it, thinking it was a simple typo and didn't think much of it. Until the next story of hers referred to the statue of limitations. And then the next one. After about story 15 I felt too awkward to alert her to it. Luckily, I don't think it ever made it into the paper.

Monuments to poor usage

From a guest opinion piece in the Helena Independent Record:

The bill, House Bill 336, was one of several bills I carried ... to rewrite Montana’s antiquated fish and game statues.

I'm pretty sure that should have been statutes, not statues. Although there are some nice fish statues.

Worst headline ever

"Mobster indicted in sperm"

The story was funny enough on its own, about a convicted gangster in federal prison who had his sperm smuggled out so his wife could get pregnant. The headline writer (not naming names ... but he's also this blog's writer) got distracted by a question before he finished writing the headline and never went back to it.

The headline writer's boss told him she thought it was meant to be a statement on the human condition. Sort of like original sin. We are all indicted in sperm.

Gee whiz

Here's one that did make it into print, from a photo caption years ago in the Kenton (Ohio) Times:

A receiver takes a piss in the end zone during a football game Friday night.

One letter can really make a difference. (It was supposed to be pass instead of piss, I'm told.)

That takes some cojones

From an outdoors gear review:

"Every year, when these gloves go on sale at the Base Camp, the town grows nuts."

You mean like Cyndi Lauper?

Reporter in an email to one of his former co-workers:

"I'm sick of working here with all these pre-Madonnas."