Editors Behaving Badly

Two 28-year-old guys from Massachusetts (who must be a real hoot at parties) spent their vacation touring the U.S. and correcting grammar errors on public signs. No one noticed. They proclaimed their triumphs on a web site. Then someone noticed. Federal prosecutors, in fact. It seems the Feds don't take kindly to having 60-year-old historic landmark signs defaced.


CNN called them "Typo Vigilantes." The Chicago Tribune, called them "a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation." I call them editors with too much time on their hands.


I get it; I'm a compulsive proofreader, myself. I can't read an incorrect sign without correcting it in my head. But these guys didn't just do it in their heads: they defaced a 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at the Grand Canyon National Park's Desert View Watchtower. They were tried in court, sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

They used a marker to cover an erroneous apostrophe, put the apostrophe in its proper place with correction fluid, and added a comma. They did not, however, correct the misspelled word, "emense." They didn't want to deface the sign any more than they had. That makes me crazy. What kind of an editor, having begun to create a symphony of correctness from chaos, stops half way? Oh, yeah. The kind that knows they are not only courting the normal scorn writers heap upon editors, but also time in a jail cell--where I understand there is lots of writing badly in need of good editing. A wisely missed opportunity, I would say.