Right after I wrote my
humblebrag apologia about finding a "typo" in a crossword puzzle (the mistaken use of "effects" for "affects"), my partner handed me a page ripped from a recent issue of
Vanity Fair. It was a tongue-in-cheek assemblage of "Unsung Superheroes: The Next Wave of Franchise Players from Marvel and DC," and included the Bean Counter, Super-Lawyer, Nude Celeb, Pop-Uppity, and Mud Slinger. Needless to say, though, the best of the lot was Grammar Girl. (Who might end up needing the services of Super-Lawyer if the real Grammar Girl,
Mignon Fogarty, ever decides to take umbrage.) Grammar Girl "swoops in to save the day whenever frightened townsfolk desperately need to know who vs. whom, that vs. which, and just plain right vs. wrong. Her modifiers never dangle and her voice is never passive. She has just the right effect. Or affect. She'll tell you..." I'm
sure she will. Hey, look, up in the sky! It's a nerd, it's a pain, it's
Grammar Girl! There were five cases of today's typo in OhioLINK (though two were for possible variant renderings of an English play called
Gammer Gurton's Needle), as well as 227 in WorldCat.
(Grammatica, from The Seven Liberal Arts, Sebald Beham, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Carol Reid
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