Somebody Has To Do it...(I guess)

A recent Boston Globe article—

On the road looking for typos
Grammar-conscious pals set signs straight
By Joseph P. Kahn

"Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson…motor across the country this spring in their '97 Nissan Sentra.

They chase the misplaced apostrophe, the disagreeing subject and verb.
.
They seek, in short, to do for America's public signage what spell-check software has done for interoffice e-mail: smarten it up and make it easier on the eye. Their weapons: Wite-Out, markers, ink pens, tape, and nerves of steel.

"I figured, Steinbeck had his dog and Kerouac had his drugs. I'd have my typos," said the 28-year-old Deck of what he calls his Typo Hunt Across America tour.

Deck, speaking by phone from somewhere in the Deep South as he and Herson rumble westward, says the point of the trip isn't to wag fingers at those who commit or ignore signage errata. It's to raise public awareness around an issue - a plague, really - that typically elicits a blank stare or shoulder shrug, if that.

"We're not going after people in a self-righteous manner, like fashion police. Or trying to make them look stupid," Deck said. "Instead, we're addressing specific errors like confusing 'its' for 'it's' or 'you're" for 'your.' Finding and correcting these, even every once in a while, is incredibly satisfying."

Typo-correction kit in hand, they've targeted signs at shopping malls, banks, parks, and roadside cafes, among other venues. …

According to Deck, the idea for the trip came to him in the shower. At that moment, he said, he thought about how irritated he'd become at the profusion of grammatically challenged signs. Here a "they're," there a "their," everywhere a "there" but where it ought to be.

"It's easy to overlook and dismiss the misuse of apostrophes," he said. "But there came a point when I couldn't hold it anymore. I decided to make this a national campaign, although I was kind of looking for an excuse to travel around the country anyway."

Check out their blog:Typo Blog