QA Hates You » Typo

This Month Only: Spelling Lessons 100% Off!

The Director — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 11:28:58 +0000

From a recent The Teaching Company catalog:

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That’s not something a quick little edit in the content management system will fix.

The School of Hard Designers

The Director — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:57:14 +0000

I know what these students will be qualified for:

Apparently, this is not a photoshop.

Today’s students, tomorrow’s interface interns.

(Link via Ed Dricsoll.)

STP Misspells “Leer”

The Director — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:15:38 +0000

An e-mail from Software Test Professionals:

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I get a lot of e-mails with action links that want me to leer more.

And, hey, while you’re at it, click on over and nominate me for a software testing professional luminary. I like to light fires, so I illuminate a lot. Indirectly.

Sometimes, You Can Spot The Poor Speller

The Director — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:31:54 +0000

The word misspelled in the image:

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But not in the alt text:

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That points not to the copywriter, but to the designer/producer for sloppy work.

And to the company putting it together for Lowe’s without, you know, checking it.

False Appositive

The Director — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:19:01 +0000

This is an even better example of why one should use the serial comma than the one I traditionally use:

…highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.

(Link seen via @iamdez.)

How Web Designers Did It In 1985

The Director — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:13:14 +0000

Ever wonder what Web designers did before the Web existed?

This article gives us some insight.

It Is True: A Scam Is Not A Joke

The Director — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:39:18 +0000

I’m cruising a low-end user site, and a flashing, garish ad greets me:

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Of course, they want the flashing border to capture your attention. You know what got mine immediately: misspelling the word receive.

I before E except after C except in a scam, I guess.

On Average, It’s Half Correct, Which Rounds Up To Perfect

The Director — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:07:43 +0000

If you want to forward a Holland America e-mail, it takes you to the Web interface where the developers have split the difference on the proper use of the possessive:

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One could try to argue, as the developer probably would, that Friends name is plural because there are multiple edit boxes. However, that would apply to the e-mail address boxes, too, and Friends name as a plural should be Friends names.

Developers are so amusing when they try to manufacture grammatical rules to rationalize their mistakes.

Not Bugs, But Some Embarrassing News Captions

The Director — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:01:09 +0000

I heard of a mythical time where professional media had proofreaders. Maybe that was in the Age of Heroes, which is to say a non-existent time before now. Here are some examples of television news captions that went from someone’s fumbling fingers directly to the air.

(Link via O’Brien Media.)

Everyone Do A Global Search And Replace RIGHT NOW

The Director — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:20:09 +0000

So I was at this Web blog reading a post about how Microsoft might want little ol’ me to be on its team, and I got a link to this “job posting.”

Except it wasn’t:

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What do you know? Another error has occured. Is this ubiquitous misspelling a part of a Microsoft library somewhere? If so, could my loyal Microsoft readers please change it to the non-passive voice We were eating our own dog food, as you can see since we have just splugged it all over your carpet?

Put down in your best practices document, gentle reader, that a part of the build process should include an automatic global search and replace for occured and spell it correctly as occurred.

I guess that job posting is fixed now, but I’m probably not Microsoft material.