Monday, February 9, 2009

What they say...

I dearly love my students and I would never make fun of them. But I do have to laugh at some of the word usage mistakes they make. In the last batch of 48 papers I read and commented on, I found two pretty amazing mistakes. If they had done it on purpose, I would have been really impressed. They didn't though, and probably wouldn't even see the humor in them that I did.

The first one was in an analysis of a TV commercial. The writer described the commercial down to the opera music playing in the background. Further on she said the commercial would appeal to men because "men think with their libretto." Is that awesome? (Of course, she meant libido, but that's really not news to any of us.)

The second one isn't as funny, but I still like it. This student was analyzing a parody of a Mastercard commercial. In the commercial, a young man is asking a young woman for a blow job after a date. The writer wrote that when the young woman responds she "makes a facial expression depreciating his comment." Oh, if only I were that clever and could do it on purpose. (Unfortunately I have no idea what word she meant to use.)

God bless spellcheckers. Have you ever made a word usage mistake that turned out to be the cleverest thing you said that year of your life?

4 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, I'm far too anal about my writing to allow spell checker to ruin anything for me. :) In fact, I rarely (if ever) use the spell checker.

    It always makes me wonder why I never entered the school spelling bee as a child. I am a walking dictionary!

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  2. Isn't school supposed to prepare you for "real life"? How many of us have participated in a spelling bee after age 10 or so? If I could get a job taking tests or competing in spelling bees, I'd be making some money!

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  3. Deprecating his comment?

    (of course, I cannot spell so perhaps you still are wondering...)

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  4. It must have had something to do with deprecation. She dropped and I didn't ask. I much prefer depreciating.

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