A Late Thanksgiving Treat

We're so thankful that we came across this sentence about The Moonstone's Franklin Blake in Jerome Meckier's Hidden Rivalries in Victorian Fiction: Dickens, Realism, and Revaluation:

His resolve not to deny or cuddle his subconscious self is a display of moral superiority over Pip as well as Ablewhite. (p. 143, emphasis ours)

We do not know how, precisely, one would cuddle one's subconscious self, but we suspect that in our present cultural moment, some clever feel-good psychoanalyst somewhere has found a way to do just that.  We would suggest that you skip the costly therapy and simply read the sentence above to yourself when you're blue.  It makes us feel pretty good, if we do say so ourselves.

For this error, we award Mr. Meckier and his editors at The University Press of Kentucky (for shame!) an Oops! Is my Lazy Showing?, a Totally Giggleworthy, and the following Drunken Proofreading rating:

**** (four stars) - Yesh, I take thish waterbottle everywhere I go. It'sh water. No, you can't have any.

Contest alert!

We discovered such a high number of errors in this AP article, titled, "Return to $1 gas? Energy prices evaporate," that we decided to share the fun with all of you.

Like every contest, this one has rules.  Here they are:

1.  Read the article and identify the number of grammatical errors it contains.

2.  Grammatical errors in quoted speech cannot be counted towards the total.

3.  Submit your answers via email to grammarsnark@gmail.com.  Your answers should identify the locations of the errors you find; however, you do not have to provide explanations  if you do not wish to do so.

4.  Contest deadline: December 12, 2008 at 11:59 p.m.

5.  The winner will receive a special (non-cash) prize.

We reserve the right to make final determinations on what may be considered an error.

Ready?  GO!

Forbes.com Phones It In

The writing and editing staffmembers at Forbes.com are responsible for something truly special in their recent article, "American Autos Worth Saving and Writing Off."  They have written a sentence so mind-bendingly bizarre that it almost defies comment -- not in a shocking, We Are (Almost) Speechless kind of way (which category was created in response to egregious errors from sources whose very natures require impeccable proofreading standards, like dictionaries).  Rather, this sentence is so spectacularly flawed that it is difficult to know where to start.  See for yourself:

Unfortunately, Chrysler--nor Ford or GM for that matter--have the luxury of such missteps and are now fighting for survival.

We have here a situation where there are words missing, multiple subject/verb disagreements, and questionable construction. We would add emphasis to highlight the problematic elements, but we don't know where to start.  Something tragic must have happened to the editor. Something tragic certainly happened to the sentence.

For this stunning stumble, we are awarding Forbes.com a Phoning It In with Distinction, an Oops! Is My Lazy Showing?, and the following Drunken Proofreading rating:

***** (five stars) - Whaaahhaa? Whodrankshaaallllthershcotch?