I really despair that pedantry will make it much beyond the 2020s. I was visiting a supplier recently, and despite being lamentably slow at taking in my surroundings and being probably the most appaling observer in the history of curiosity, I happened to notice a whiteboard on the wall. Hoping it would reveal trade secrets, I started to read it, and asked the nearest operative what the heading 'ICENTIVE' meant.
Being in the land of the Iceni, I mused with that possible etymological root, but not for long, as it read 'Incentive' and was I bloody blind or stupid? I bravely pointed out that it perhaps lacked quite that many letters, when the entire office fell silent, then collectively breathed 'Oh yeah....'
The author was present, and had apparently daubed the sign more than six months earlier, but he, and the rest of those present had not spotted what attacked me in a gnat's crotchet.
Perhaps enough monkeys, typewriters and time would produce the works of Shakespeare, but presumably it would be exponentially quicker for one to produce 'Hey, hey, we're the monkeys!'
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Greg - should you ever manage to get a photo of such a howler, send it over and I'll post it on http://i-care-too-much.blogspot.com/.
I should be added in the guy's defence, however that many people (myself included) do acquire a strange kind of dyslexia when writing (or reading) in capital letters, especially if it's larger than normal handwriting size. I have iced many a 'HAPPY BIRTDAY' cake over the years - I always tell myself not to do it but it just kind of happens by magic.
[Sigh] . . . 'IT should be added . . .
See what I mean, though? I type a capital 'I' and then it all goes horribly wrong . . .
Juliet, don't worry, I am firmly in that camp - I used to do a bit of signwriting to make ends nearly meet in the days before the worlds of computer graphics and greengrocers' apostrophes collided, and I have spent literally weeks re-doing ballsed-up signboards. Now there is another art consigned to history by the microchip.
All this grammar nazism is an over-compensation for the incredulity of having brought three dyslexics into the world (well, I was involved)and their mother a wordsmith too.
I suppose you mean "incredulity at..."! ;-)
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