Grammatical Hilarity Question?

Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.

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It’s not so much grammar, but I read somewhere recently about the brouhaha that ensued when a newspaper was reporting about the Large Hadron Collider, and transposed the R and D in Hadron…

Let’s eat, Grandma vs Let’s eat Grandma!

You can put pickles up yourself.

@anartist What was that supposed to be?

I recently answered a question on a listserv about where everyone was. I entered my excuse as “I haven’t been able to participate much lately because my life is filled to the limit with my kids, my head injured sister, my husband and dogs, one of which is only halfway trained.”

I received hilarious queries of when exactly I was going to get around to training my husband.

@MyNewtBoobs – Put pickles up (can/preserve pickles) yourself (at home), or put them up yourself, like up your bum.

Not grammar, exactly:

A famous headline in a Philadelphia newspaper: “Nun beats off attacker.”

Famous book about the quirks of punctuation in English:

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.

Groucho Marx’s joke: “I shot an elephant standing in my pyjamas.”

@gailcalled I would have shot him for wearing my pajamas too. Who wants stretched out pajamas?

I thought he looked very fetching (pj’s had little sheep on white clouds with a blue background – rather like a scene from Fantasia).

@MyNewtBoobs—how to do home canning/pickling from Washington Post Style section years back

another—
Child’s Stool Great for Use in Garden

editors collect blooper headlines and other printed gaffes.
The Newseum in DC used to have them screened on the bathroom stall walls for your entertainment.

@gailcalled I like the story at the beginning of the book about a letter from a military unit back to the base that should have meant “If we need help, we’ll let you know, but leave us alone for right now” but because of a misplaced comma ended up meaning “Come! Quickly! Right now!”

My wife on Facebook:

“I bought my [crazyivan] a new exercise machine for Christmas and it gives you a heck of a workout. I just did a 20 minute workout on it and I pooped”

…I’m assuming she meant “I’m”, but she may have actually pooped too…

@MyNewtBoobs: That example lost something in translation, I think. Can you find the original?

@gailcalled ”...So all this is quite amusing, but it is noticeable that no one emails the far more interesting example of the fateful mispunctuated telegram that precipitated the Jameson Raid on the Transvaal in 1896 – I suppose that’s a reflection of modern education for you. Do you know of the Jameson Raid, described as a “fiasco”? Marvellous punctuation story. Throw another log on that fire. The Transvaal was a Boer republic at the time, and it was believed that the British and other settlers around Johannesburg (who were denied civil rights) would rise up if Jameson invaded. But unfortunately, when the settlers sent their telegraphic invitation to Jameson, it included a tragic ambiguity:
It is under these circumstances that we feel constrained to call upon you to come to our aid should a disturbance arise here the circumstances are so extreme that we cannot but believe that you and the men under you will not fail to come to the rescue of people who are so situated.
As Eric Partridge points out in his Usage and Abusage, if you place a full stop after the word “aid” in this passage, the message is unequivocal. It says, “Come at once!” If you put it after “here”, however, it says something more like, “We might need you at some later date depending on what happens here, but in the meantime – don’t call us, Jameson, old boy; we’ll call you.” Of course, the message turned up at The Times with a full stop after “aid” (no one knows who put it there) and poor old Jameson just sprang to the saddle, without anybody wanting or expecting him to.” (Truss, 10)

“Russian agents kill warlord with $10 million on his head.” This was a CNN headline in 2006 that I liked so much I blogged about it.

@MyNewtBoobs: Nice. That’s why punctuation exists…for clarity rather than the misbegotten belief that its use is necessary only to torture teen-aged English students.

There’s a solution to an Encyclopedia Brown mystery that revolves around punctuation. A character is trying to deliver the following message:

“How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is all about. You are sweet and faithful. Girls who are unlike you kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I’d like to praise your beauty forever. I can’t stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.”

He dictates over the phone, however, and it winds up being transcribed this way:

“How I long for a girl who understands what true romance is. All about you are sweet and faithful girls who are unlike you. Kiss the first boy who comes along, Adorabelle. I’d like to praise your beauty forever. I can’t. Stop thinking you are the prettiest girl alive. Thine, Tyrone.”

@SavoirFaire I get the feeling the author created the second version first, because it’s a bit awkward phrasing in the flattering version.

I think they would have to be created together, but I’m sure his focus was on the second. Ah, well… it’s a children’s mystery book.

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