Mistakes Are the Best Teachers

A few days ago, I joined the year 2010 (only a few years late!) and made an Instagram account. It’s called, unsurprisingly, leethelinguist.

I made my first post, and what did I notice a few minutes later? A typo! I blame it on my iPhone’s autocorrect! I’d mentioned how my day job was having a technical problem on their end, so I had more time to write posts. Of course, it autocorrected to “there end,” which is something I would instantly notice anywhere! And I did notice it right away but only after I had nervously posted the photo. Before any of my *zillions* of followers could see it and criticize me, I quickly commented on the photo that autocorrect had gotten me!

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Malapropism Monday, Week 3

It’s a bit late here for today’s Malapropism Monday post due to today being Presidents Day — in the AP writing style there is no apostrophe — here in the US.

Today’s malapropism will be a short and quick one, because I’m tired after wrangling a couple of kids through the rain. Speaking of tiredness have you ever seen “weary” written in place of “wary”? I do all the time. People will say things such as, “I’m really weary of the new policies at work — I don’t think they’ll have a positive effect on absenteeism.” It’s not likely that you can be weary of a new policy, right? Weary means tired or fatigued. I suppose it’s possible, but not very likely.

The more apropos word in that situation would be “wary,” which means “watchful, cautious, or alert” according to Dictionary.com. It’s also possible that you could mean to say you’re “leery” of a policy, since leery means “suspicious” and is a synonym of “wary.” You could say I’m weary of seeing this error and wary whenever I see the word “weary,” and I’m leery of the misuse of these words!

Anyway, the reason my post is late today is because my family and I went to San Francisco since we all had the day off of work and school. We’ve only lived in the Bay Area for a few months, so there’s still a lot we haven’t seen here. There was rain all day long, so we didn’t spend as much time outside walking as we would have liked to, but we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (a family favorite anywhere in the world we can find one) followed by some walking around Pier 39 and a bit of driving tourism.

Here are a few photos from today:

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