An Oldie but Goodie from The Christian Science Monitor

Picture us, if you will, standing in front of The Christian Science Monitor, arms akimbo, one hip popped, and a horrified look on our face. If we were inclined to such phrases, the words that would fall from our disbelieving lips might sound something like, "Oh. No. You. Didn't." If we weren't so stunned, paralyzed even, we would be perilously close to tears.

What, you ask, could inspire such a reaction? The following sentence, which appeared in the Monitor's article, "Obama and Lee Myung-bak both condemn North Korea":

And then, 28 minutes after their appearance began, the two president's walked out of the Rose Garden and down the colonnade to the residence for lunch, followed by a long line of male aides in dark blue suits and a lonely female aide in a summery white outfit.

While we recognize that this line appeared in the Vote Blog, which some might consider to be a less grammatically and punctuationally demanding medium than, say, a more traditional news article, we do not believe that blog authors for "award-winning international news organizations" can be excused for not knowing that under no circumstances whatsoever should an apostrophe be used to denote a plural noun. In fact, to put a very fine point on it, we do not believe that any writer in the English language who has completed a secondary education can be excused for violating such a simple and essential principle of punctuation. Perhaps you think we are too hard, too dictatorial, too merciless. Perhaps we do not care.

For this egregious violation, we hereby award The Christian Science Monitor a We Are (Almost) Speechless, an Oops, Is my Lazy Showing?, and the following Drunken Proofreading rating:

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

Simply too, too!

We are beside ourselves. Behold the following "Middle America" entry from the Thesaurus.com application on Dictionary.com, which cites the 2008 edition of Roget's New Millennium Thesaurus as its source:

Main Entry: Middle America
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: general populice
Synonyms: bourgeoisie, silent majority, subtopia, suburbia, the burbs

Perhaps, like us, you realize that it is unconscionable for a dictionary to have a spelling error, even if said dictionary is online (although it should be noted that Dictionary.com purports to draw from, and rigorously cites, renowned published dictionaries). Perhaps, this discovery has shaken you to your very foundations and you find yourself wondering aloud, "If one cannot trust the dictionary, whom can one trust?" Rest assured, dear readers, when all else fails, The Grammar Wall of Shame will not let you down.

This is only the second offense in The Grammar Wall of Shame's history to merit the designation, We Are (Almost) Speechless. If it pleases you to replay in your mind the scene from Mary Poppins where Mr. Banks is thrown out of the bank, substituting Dictionary.com for Mr. Banks, please do so.

This one's a dilly!

Let's just say we've seen ESPN.com's lazy, and it's not pretty.

We found this article-subject disagreement snafu in an article titled, "Oregon State's Stroughter expects to play at Cincy":

"The Beavers opened their season last Thursday night with a 24-7 victory at home against Utah, testing the arms of a competing sophomore QBs Sean Canfield and Lyle Moevao." (emphasis ours)

The indefinite article a does not belong here because a) the sentence refers to more than one quarterback, and b) both quarterbacks are sophomores. (It should also be noted that it is unlikely that both arms of either quarterback were tested. We admit, the very thought makes us giggle.) In short, there is no excuse for the presence of this a.

At first glance, this appears to be a simple case of Oops! Is my lazy showing? However, we noticed that a line at the end of the article indicates, "Information from The Associated Press was used in this report." Out of what some might call a morbid curiosity, we did a little digging and found the original AP story, and what to our wondering eyes should appear? No, not what you might think - but we did find the errant sentence, identical to the one found in the ESPN article.

Dear reader, we wonder if you fully understand the implications of this discovery. We are only beginning to grasp it ourselves. Here is what evidently occurred: the AP writer wrote the original sentence, which his/her editor failed to notice. ESPN got the story from the AP wire and assigned their own writer to the story. He or she then (it is to be assumed) did their own research. Please hold on--it's about to get really ugly: the hapless ESPN writer excerpted chunks of the AP article (which we know is done all the time), including the questionable sentence, but apparently did not read it carefully enough to detect the error. This means that at least four people (and possibly more) looked at this sentence and found it acceptable for publication.

We probably don't need to tell you that an error of this magnitude is in a category all its own: We Are (Almost) Speechless. It is now 11:30 a.m. We will be hysterical until 11:45 a.m.