I worked for the Bureau of the Census for three years as a writer-editor. In those days, we didn’t have word processors or spell/grammar check, so before submitting a text for publication, we proofread it in detail, including capitalization, bold/italic fonts, font size, punctuation, and spelling. Our goal was to publish a letter- and word-perfect document. Today, that goal is apparently unimportant, but even after all these years, I still read like an editor and I can’t help catching textual errors.

For example, the historic district of St. Charles offers ghost tours, and one of their posters says: “Haunted House. Twilight tours after dark.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines twilight as “the light of the sky between sunset and full night.” It defines dark as “devoid of light.” In other words, it’s impossible to have a “twilight” tour after “dark.” Merriam-Webster defines evening as “the final part of the day and the early part of the night.” That’s probably a better description of the tour time. Just knowing it’s a ghost tour pretty much tells visitors when it will occur, so I doubt if anyone except me notices (or cares about) that error.

I was astronomically mystified when I was reading a book in which the author told readers that “It was already late June, so the days were getting longer.” The summer solstice, when the sun is at its highest in the northern hemisphere, is usually on June 21. After that, the days get shorter, not longer. Luckily, that error didn’t affect the plot of the story.

During my employment years, I worked with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). I once received a letter from the head of the department thanking me for my “patients.” That letter was generated on a computer in the early 2000s, but spell/grammar check doesn’t always catch homonyms if a word is spelled correctly. In my opinion, that error looked really bad, coming from the department that oversees the public K-12 school system, which includes the teaching of vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. I practiced my patience, because there were no patients working in my local program.

Most confusing to me recently was the care tag in a shirt I bought. The tag said “Reversible garment. Turn inside out to wash.” If it’s reversible, which side is the inside? I just threw it in the washer and it came out clean.