Whoa! Who are your friends?

Just got this on a list serve I'm on. It's from a list of rules for a condo association:

b. Defecation of the animals must be 'pooper scooped' from any common area in the complex.
c.The afore mentioned also applies to visitors and are the responsibility of the apartment dwellers being visited.

Proof that there is no past or future. There is only now.

And the people I send my money too are guardians of it.

This was in the letter that accompanied our Home Owners Association assessment bill:

The Board of Directors is very pleased to announce that there will be no increase in association dues assessment for 2009.

Vinings Estates, The Registry, and the Ridge residents' assessment will remain unchanged at $550 and is due in total by January 15, 2009.

The Cove and East Gate residents' assessment will remain unchanged at $365 and is due in total by January 15, 1009.

At least the people who live in The Cove are hoping there is only now, because the penalty on that could be pretty steep.

Got fleas?

S and I saw this sign over the weekend:

"Humane Society Flea Market"

Hmm...

And the prize goes to

A few odds and ends this morning.

(1) Found this sentence yesterday in an article I'm editing:

Strattera is the first medication to receive an FDA indication for treatment of ADHD in adults.

I'm certain the source the writer consulted used the word "indication." The problem is the work the writer was doing is meant for a health consumer audience, not a medical or pharmaceutical audience. It's like the writer simply took the information in but didn't have time to digest it before spilling it back out. Had the writer taken the time to think about what the sentence meant in the day to day language of the audience she was writing for, then she would have at least used the word "approval."

But the problem with the sentence is actually more basic than that. The sentence appeared in a section about what medical treatment is used for adults with ADHD. Here's the sentence before the one in question:

If stimulant medications have bothersome side effects or are not effective, your doctor might recommend atomoxetine (Strattera), a non stimulant medication.

The real problem with the FDA sentence is that it doesn't add anything to the reader's understanding. Since the reader is not going to be writing prescriptions, then it doesn't matter that Strattera is the first -- or only -- medication approved for this use. What question the reader probably will have is, "What is a non stimulant medication, and how is it different than the other medications?" And that's because the real question the reader is going to have is, "How will this medication affect me?"

(2) Speaking of digesting....When I was a young (er, relatively young) teacher, I had a freshman composition class and we were studying the use of figurative language. One of the students asked me what a mixed metaphor is. I stumbled through an answer and searched my brain frantically to come up with an example.

That afternoon, I went to an American literature seminar, and the professor, for some reason, wanted to discuss the value of seminars in a graduate program.

One of the women in the seminar, who had actually passed her generals and was working on her dissertation, said:

Oh, I love seminars. To me they're just like this huge, delicious smorgasbord where I can pick and choose and try things on for size.

It took me a week to get rid of the image of her walking down the street wearing a wardrobe made out of mashed potatoes and caviar.

(3) I got an email this morning with the subject line, "I hate to edit the Word mechanic. That being said...". It came from my son :

From a recent post:
"There are two questions you here all the time in certain circles in places like Birmingham: "Who's your mother?"

I fixed it. Now I'll have to have a conversation with him about the use of internal quotation marks.

Whoops

See what happens when editors don't think, or at least don't fact check.

First, go here.

Now see this.

My hat is off to Ishmael.

P.S. I certainly hope that by the time anyone sees this, the newspaper has realized it's error and taken the picture down. But it was there.

Could have been what?

I heard this on a rebroadcast of a football game from last November.

"Wow, that ball could have been almost intercepted."

You have to love sports announcers.

Re: Missing Data

I got an envelope the other day in the mail from the credit union that holds our car loan. The outside of the envelope was marked "RE: MISSING DATA." When I took out the letter inside, bold print at the top said it was important that I "send the missing data indicated below before September 15." Then when I read the rest of the letter, it turned out the "missing data" was the name of a beneficiary and my authorization to activate a $1,500 accidental death insurance policy that the credit union had paid for and that was mine at no cost to me. I also had the option, of course, of increasing the amount of coverage "(see chart on back)." The envelope and the request for missing data looked and sounded official.

Have you ever had a conversation you thought you were paying attention to only to find out after you say "yes" to something that you have no idea exactly what you agreed to or realize that you just agreed to something totally opposite of what you think. It's the old three penny game. You're sitting at the bar and the guy next to you lays three pennies on the bar. "How many pennies do you see there?" he asks. You answer three. He says, "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

He moves the pennies around as if they are part of the old shell game. He asks you again how many and whether you are sure. He does this several times, and then says "I say there's two pennies there."

You know it's a trick, but you don't know what it is. You look puzzled and you concentrate very hard on the pennies to see what he's done because you don't want to be taken in. He asks again how many you see.

"Three."

He takes his hands from the bar and says. "I'm not going to touch them. I say there's two. So how many do you see?"

He asks the question one or two more times and then he says, "Look. I'm not going to touch them. I say there's two. Now if I'm wrong will you give me a dollar?"

"I guess. Sure."

Two for the road

Here are a couple of signs we spotted this past week. I saw this on a produce stand on a corner in Atlanta's Midtown:

"Home of the vine ripen tomato."

It almost sounds like cussing.

And Sandy saw this in a diner specializing in Southern cooking:

"2 meets and 3 sides"

What I want to know is do they arrange the meets for you or do you have to schedule them yourself?

When copy editors get the hiccups

This paragraph came from last Sunday's New York Times.
__________

"I want to take all our energy and all our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president of the United States," said Mrs. Clinton said, who, as she noted in the speech, drew more than 18 million votes that she can now steer toward Mr. Obama.
_________