Thursday, January 31, 2008

even cash registers need copy editors

The commissary just installed self-checkout lanes, which have to be the greatest invention since ... whatever cool thing was invented just before them. I'm squarely in their target demographic: extremely impatient, with a degree of computer literacy and no desire to unnecessarily interact with other humans. I also have a knack for picking the worst possible line, like the time the old woman in front of me at King Soopers paid her $67 grocery bill in dimes and nickels ("$63.35, $63.40, $63.45 ... oh dear, I lost count, I need to start over ...").


So I'm excited by the commissary's leap into the 20th century. I do, however, wish the software vendor had run the produce lookup menu past an editor:

At the top left: "Aplles".

It's possible that this is the only typo in the entire produce menu (this page of the menu covers anise through avocados). But as any editor will tell you -- where there's one mistake like this, there's usually more. And worse. Because you have to wonder, if the programmers couldn't be bothered to run spellcheck before shipping this software to the Defense Department, did they bother to ... debug? Beta test?

And yes, I'm totally going to start buying random produce so I can look for more typos on other menu pages. Because I'm an editing geek, and that's what we do.

5 comments:

Stacy said...

Oh yeah, like the commissary carries anise. Snort.

Anonymous said...

There's a bit at the end of "27 Dresses" (shut up. it's a dry spell for good movies over here) where they show the credits over newspaper stories covering the final wedding. It's actually pretty cool, and they put a lot of thought into the stories, but The Not New York Times doesn't follow AP style either, and that bugged me.

It would bug you too, if you sat through to the end of "27 Dresses."

-Erin

Unknown said...

Get this...I went to buy Ben one of these new computerized programs that helps kids practice writing. One of them had on the cover art that they help kids learn "spilling." Since Ben is quite gifted in spilling, I passed on that one.

For the non-facebook world, is there an apartment update?

Karen said...

"Lesson 1: Grape juice is best. If your mom won't buy that, red kool-aid will work too."

Anonymous said...

The human interaction thing, I totally agree. The world disagrees with me on this however...

Otherwise

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One of the best sites for that sort of stuff.