inveterate-editor-blog

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Can you spell check better than a graphic designer?

In 2012 Barnes & Noble designed a tablet case that listed various characters from various classics of fiction.

How many of the 77 characters can you recognize and place?

For bonus points, how many of the ten spelling errors (!) can you find? Even if you only find one, you still did better than the Barnes & Noble design team.

But maybe I’m being a little hard on them. After all, spell checking is a long, involved process.

The first step is to google the name.

Let’s try “Captian Ahab”...

All right, maybe it’s not so long and involved.

Below are the corrections and character origins

Jane Eyre - Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

d'Artagnan - The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Don Quixote - Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

Basil Hallward - The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Hawkeye - The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper

Beatrice - The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

Cheshire Cat - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Miss Havisham - Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Heathcliff - Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

Oberon - A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Macbeth - Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Dorothea Brooke - Middlemarch, by George Eliot INCORRECT SPELLING: Dorthea Brooke

Raskolnikov - Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky INCORRECT SPELLING: Raskolinkov

Lucy Honeychurch - A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster

Captain Hook - Peter and Wendy, by J. M. Barrie

Daisy Buchanan - The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Huckleberry Finn - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective; all by Mark Twain INCORRECT SPELLING: Huckelberry Finn

Magua - The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper

Viola - Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare

Elinor & Marianne Dashwood - Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen

Fagin - Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens INCORRECT SPELLING: Fagan

Queen of Hearts - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Pearl - The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Quasimodo - The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo

Julien Sorel - The Red and the Black, by Stendhal INCORRECT SPELLING: Julian Sorel

Emma Bovary - Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert INCORRECT SPELLING: Emma Bovery

Tinker Bell - Peter and Wendy, by J. M. Barrie INCORRECT SPELLING: Tinkerbell

Gertrude - Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Jay Gatsby - The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Hatter - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass, by J. M. Barrie TECHNICAL ERROR: The character’s name is the Hatter. Lewis Carroll never refers to him as the Mad Hatter.

Puck - A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Catherine Earnshaw - Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë INCORRECT SPELLING: Catherine Ernshaw

Titania - A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

Alice Munro - The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper TECHNICAL ERROR: Not technically an error, but a questionable inclusion, as Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning short story author comes to mind way ahead of Alice Munro from The Last of the Mohicans.

Leopold Bloom - Ulysses, by James Joyce

Peter Pan - Peter and Wendy, by J. M. Barrie

Becky Sharp - Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray

Orsino - Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare

Hero - Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakspeare

Captain Ahab - Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville INCORRECT SPELLING: Captian Ahab

Anna Karenina - Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Prince Myshkin - The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ariel - The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Porthos - The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Hester Prynne - The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mr. Casaubon - Middlemarch, by George Eliot

Pip - Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Isabel Archer - The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James

Buck - The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Tom Sawyer - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Nick Carraway - The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Estella - Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Prospero - The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Aramis - The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Bathsheba Everdene - Far from the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy

Clarissa Dalloway - Mrs Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf

Lydgate - Middlemarch, by George Eliot

Athos - The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

Elizabeth Bennet - Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

Count Vronsky - Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

Oliver Twist - Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens

Uncas - The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper

Olivia - Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare

Candide - Candide, by Voltaire

Emma Woodhouse - Emma, by Jane Austen

Anne Elliot - Persuasion, by Jane Austen

Caliban - The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Pangloss - Candide, by Voltaire

Uriah Heep - David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

Hermia - A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare

La Esmeralda - The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo TECHNICAL ERROR: In the novel she is much more commonly known simply as Esmeralda.

Banquo - Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

David Copperfield - David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens

Mr Rochester - Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë TECHNICAL ERROR: There should really be a period after the Mr.

Sancho Panza - Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

Dorian Gray - The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde INCORRECT SPELLING: Dorian Grey

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Not only on the internet! Now available in stores!

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Third ad from Jet.com, three glaring errors

The inspiration for Mr. Saves-a-lot is obviously the trailblazingest foreparent of Middle English honorific stage name wordplay, Sir Mix-a-Lot.

This ad would be much more effective if Mix-a-Lot’s name had been used as a template. 

Instead, here’s what went wrong:

Sir-Mix-a-Lot capitalizes Lot, which makes sense because it’s part of his name. It also clearly distinguishes Lot from Iot (iot capitalized).

The in-name verb here is second person singular (saves) instead of what it should be, first person singular (save). When Sir-Mix-a-Lot says “I mix a lot”, it loses impact and coolness when a second person chimes in with “He mixes a lot”.

Mr. is used instead of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s more noble and knightly title, Sir. But also, only men can be knighted, so this ad in essence alienates women.

And so to fix all these problems, the name should be:

Sir-or-Dame-Save-a-Lot

Not to mention the inexplicable use of commas, but I just did anyway.

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Two Roads to the Same Mistake

Either:

a) the possessive apostrophe in women’s was overlooked

or 

b) an S was added to pluralize the already plural women

The intent was more likely plurality rather than possessiveness, to match the corresponding use of damas, plural of dama, Spanish for lady.

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Error #2 in this Jet.com ad campaign

After my first read of this ad something seemed eerily off with the copy. After another glance I figured out what it was.

The message is addressed “Dear reality” and signed “Sincerely, your brain”, logically indicating that the letter writer is illogically reality’s brain, which I assume is not the intent.

Instead, the brain in question presumably belongs to the woman in the ad, and as such the greeting should be changed:

Dear woman, Can’t. Handle. The. Savings. Sincerely, your brain.

Or, in keeping with reality as the recipient:

Dear reality, Can’t. Handle. The. Savings. Sincerely, a woman’s brain.

Alternate alternatives:

Dearest brain, Sorry. You. Couldn’t. Handle. The. Savings. And. Blew. Up. Love, reality.

Endearing brain, You. Can’t. Handle. My. Realness. Sincerely, the savings.

My dear, dear savings, Can’t. Handle. Your. Hyperrealism. All the best, an exploding human brain.

And c’mon, Jet.com, this is your rollout campaign! I don’t want to see any more errors, egregious or not.

[inveterate-editor-blog]

I had 15 items. It took me three minutes to decide.

[inveterate-editor-blog]

Jet.com needs to brush up on their cryptids

For many, Loch Ness is synonymous with the creature who reputedly lives in its waters. But Loch Ness is the body of water itself—loch being Scottish Gaelic for lake—and cannot be used alone to refer to the creature. The ad of course should have referred to it as the Loch Ness Monster or Nessie.

I would have gone with Nessie, as it works phonetically well with Yeti.