God doesn’t like it when we forget I before E except after C

For these typos, you go to the sin bin.
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“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”

When I look at this picture of the Seven Sorrows sign in Middletown, I imagine a parishioner attending confession, contrite for having forgotten this rule: I before E except after C.

It’s a venial sin, to be sure, but one needful of penance. Something on the order of five Hail Marys and the purchase of a good spelling book.

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There was another swing and miss on “receive” in this graphic from MLB Network, part of a story about Hall of Fame candidates.

So much for high heat; the missing E is as obvious as a beach ball floating toward home plate.

No matter how you spell it, Tim Raines received 46.1 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, down from 52.2 percent in 2013. A candidate must garner 75 percent of the vote to be elected to the Hall of Fame.

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You don’t have to tell the Hershey Bears how to spell receive. The American Hockey League team nailed it on this banner.

But the Bears are being whistled for another violation. They’re going off for two minutes for illegal use of an apostrophe: “Member’s receive,” of course, should be “Members receive.”

The apostrophe can be used to show possession (Coco’s Kids Club, for instance) or with contractions (don’t you know), but the apostrophe does not form a plural.

Get thee to the penalty box, aka the sin bin.

And you feel shame.

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There are the shamed, and then there are the shameless.

I cringe every time I see professional journalists playing themselves on fictional television, as CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Candy Crowley and Ashleigh Banfield each make appearances during the second season of the Netflix original series “House of Cards.”

So maybe it’s poetic justice that the fake CNN graphic from “House of Cards” has a misplaced apostrophe, which suggests that a lone teacher walked off the job.

No matter. A single educator or a whole teachers union, neither would stand a chance against Frank Underwood.

 

 

 

About the Author

Neal Goulet

Neal Goulet, Owner
Having been a journalist, Neal knows writing, grammar and style, as well as the language and movements of a newsroom.
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