Tuesday, January 15, 2008

". . . when the menstrual sings a song . . . "

The title for this post, taken from an actual sentence in a paper on the Odyssey that I received, reminds me that one of the (unintentional, I'm sure) effects of spell-checks is that they can produce unexpected but often delightful moments of humor for instructors as they read student papers.

In that vein, I point you in the direction of Taylor Mali's "The Impotence of Proofreading," with thanks to Cordelia who mentioned this in her comment on the previous post.

There's one vulgar term; the title of this post should suggest the direction in which the language does go, so take heed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Umm, I resemble that remark.

John B. said...

As do I--I just now realized I got the title of the piece wrong: it's not "The Impotence of Reading" but "The Impotence of Proofreading."

Now corrected. But still.

AshleyC said...

That's FANTASTIC!

Especially on a day that needs a few more laughs!

...still laughing, thanks!

Cordelia said...

I'm curious: which of the several off-color words did you consider to be the "vulgar term ?" First letter will do.

John B. said...

Cordelia,
Where he gets a bit confused about the word used for operating a computer mouse.

Cordelia said...

Interesting. I had found several, as I called them, off-color words (an old fashioned term, I'll admit), and wondered which one sounded the alarm. Funny that the one that struck you that way is a shortened form of the correct word for the object in question.

John B. said...

Ah, yes--I missed a couple.