While celebrating Christmas with family in a small Ontario town this past weekend, I ran across countless examples of misspelled signs, inappropriate use of apostrophes in what should have been plurals, random capitalization of Important Words and other affronts to word nerds. Sadly, I did not have anything with me to capture them for your amusement. But here are some other random misspellings from my “glad I didn’t let that one go” files:

• the shear volume of information (sheer)
• tighten the reigns on spending (reins)
• can eek out a competitive edge (eke)
• additionnal information (additional)
• allows buyers to peak inside (peek)
• wheel barrels (wheelbarrows).

And lest you think I only look with a critical eye, here are some examples of expressive writing that I found delightful:

• “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” – Nicholas Carr in Is Google Making Us Stupid?
• “Occasionally I’ll either be tuned into my local NPR station, KCRW, at exactly the right time…or I’ll fall down some Internet rabbit hole…” – Colleen Wainwright
• “Mostly, I herded actors from room to room — I was a border collie for the comely.” – Quinn Cummings in Notes From the Underwire (a funny book, by the way).

What amusing, enjoyable or painful writing have you seen lately?