Don’t bitch about Adblocker if you can’t use Spellchecker!

Trust me, I’ve had these kinds of comments aimed at me in the past.

And woe to me if I ever raised the issue with anyone else.

Background.

On occasion, and probably more times than I care to admit, I will have a typographical error in my blog.  I might not notice it when it goes to print, but when somebody brings it to my attention, I simply make the correction, thank them, and move on with my day.

Of course, this can also involve certain instances where a publication of record – hmm – might have a typographical error in their work.  And you wonder to yourself, as you see these typos… “Hmm… this is a newspaper, don’t they have editors who check these things for accuracy?”

You would think that, wouldn’t you?

Yeah, maybe not.

Still, these classic Times Union headline typos are works of unintentional laughter.

Such as this classic from last year about the recent nationwide spelling bee.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m sure the spellers in the Capital Regino are scratching their heads over this one.

Here’s another classic from the world of mis-scrambled headlines.

Now in this instance, I was actually informed by a Times Union staffer that “gymnist” is the correct term for this athletic discipline, and that I should not be correcting others when I can’t even be bothered to follow the standard rule of using only one space after a period.

Yep, folks, there’s your Associated Press writing clear as day.

Then came this morning’s little gaffe.

And trust me, my original plan was to write a blog post about why you should ALWAYS use ad-blocking software when you browse the web – in addition to avoiding unnecessary and obtrusive advertising, you cut down on the risk of malicious adverts that could trick you into clicking on them – only to suddenly infect your computer with malware or ransomware or some other nasty ware.

In fact, the McAfee software that came bundled with my new Dell desktop computer kept flagging a certain website that I would normally trust.

And my blog post would have been about such matters … except that the subject of the blog post changed dramatically when I saw this headline.

That’s right, kids.  Guideliens.  You know, when you owe a debt on your property, the bank will put a guidelien on your land.  Sorta.

Yeah, yeah, it seems like I’m nit-picking here…

But sweet candy on the mountain, there’s so many nits to pick, you would need a petroleum drum of lice shampoo to control them all.

Now granted, I could have simply sent a letter to the Times Union and told them, “Hey, I spotted a typo on your headline, you should really fix it…”

But why do that when I can write a whole blog post about such matters for my own personal edification?  😀