Posted on 09/21/2010 9:36:46 AM PDT by Inappropriate Laughter
SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning.
The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public.
Lee MacMillan of South Bend said his wife spotted the error on Saturday while sitting in traffic.
"She got home and said, ‘I can't believe it said what I think it said,’" MacMillan recalls.
"So we were out driving around yesterday and sure enough, it had that typo in it. So we took a picture and the rest is history, as they say," MacMillan adds.
MacMillan posted the picture he took on Facebook. He also emailed it to his neighbor, South Bend School Superintendent Jim Kapsa.
Responsibility for the spelling error has been claimed by the Blue Waters Group. The company does work for the city of South Bend's redevelopment commission to promote the city.
"I feel terrible. It's a mistake we made and we're guilty of it, and responsible for it. and we take full responsibility for the error," said Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group.
"Four people looked at it, eyeballed it and didn't see the mistake, and those people all work for me,” Strickler explained. “We take responsibility for it. We simply blew it. We did not see the missing "L."
He says he became aware of the problem Monday morning.
"We jumped on it and immediately had it taken down by Burkhart. They took it out of rotation and began to repair it," Strickler said.
"We're the ones who made the mistake, not the city or the school," Strickler emphasized.
As of late afternoon on Monday, a representative from the Blue Waters Group indicated the content of the billboard had been fixed and the digital message was up and running again.
At a recent facility opening for our hospital system, the sign vendor was asked to make signs pointing new team members to parking. The signs read:
Opening Team Memeber Parking
They had 750 of these signs made up with the same error. Needless to say, there was some embarrassment on the part of senior leadership. There’s no accounting for good editors anymore. Spell check or bust, right?
Spelling is not one of the 15 things.
Department of Pubic safety is the best resume error.
Okay, where to start?
1. That is about the spelling proficiency we’d expect from our public schools after dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the teachers’ unions (I mean, classrooms).
2. Many teachers certainly do check out the pubic schools. As evidenced by increasing articles of teachers viewing students as potential sexual appetizers for their own gratification.
3. Way to go, NEA and AFT! This poster sums it all up for most of us when it comes to public education.
If this had been in California or Massachusetts, I’m not sure it would have been “accidental”
Several years ago, our county Board of Realtors had thousands of Tee shirts made.
The dimwit who proofread the final draft let them print
Board of “Relators”. Thousands and thousands had to be thrown away.
Several years ago when the children were still in high school we went to a function at the school.
There by the front door was a large sign with large letters
“SAVE THE ENVIERNMENT”
Or noticed!
Honest, I’m not making this up... Back in the early 1980’s I opened up my own CPA office. I had a sign painter paint a beautiful 2 foot X 3 foot sign with 3 inch high black lettering, shadowed in gray. It looked fabulous, except for one thing.. she left the “L” out of public on both sides of the sign....
LOL!
Home School
I'm from central Delaware, and that's exactly the way they pronounce it here. I used to be a typesetter and got copy for an advertisement from an electrical parts-supply store that listed one of its products as "War King." I asked the printer whether it should be "Wire" King. "Yes," the printer sighed. "He spells it like he says it."
If the story had not led off with South Bend, my first guess would have been the Tampa, FL area....given all the teacher/student sex scandals. I guess that would have made it somewhat Freudian.
Someone ran spellcheck and found that word to be acceptable. Likely the same situation with public/pubic. Computers are only as intelligent as we program them to be, so when trying to proofread for context, humans still reign supreme.
BWAAAAHAAAAAHAAA! That’s GREAT!
Board of “Relators”.
A lot of people seem to pronounce Realtor as Real-a-tor. Maybe he was concentrating on where to put the 'a'.
Public School ping
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