Misused Words and Phrases

These are the kinds of errors that make the job fun. They're humorous illustrations of how a simple edit or two can vastly affect meaning.

In an excellent textbook on filmmaking, the author was explaining how to clean a lens:

Before:
Gently stroke the lens with a camel's hair brush.

After:
Gently stroke the lens with a camel-hair brush.

Before the edit, clarifying that you use a brush made of camel hair, you would have been cleaning a lens with a hairbrush belonging to a camel!

In a college textbook on computers, the author was discussing the rapid technological development of our times and used genetic engineering as an example:

Before:
...genetic engineering being used to grow poultry with big breasts.

After:
...genetic engineering being used to grow large-breasted poultry.

I'm sure you can imagine the well-endowed Mae West-caricature turkey that my esteemed colleague Gary Palmatier sketched in the margin!

In a biographical account of WWII fighter pilots in Europe, the author alluded to a gunner's hairbrained scheme. This is a classic example of common figures of speech that we have all heard spoken but rarely see written. The correct term is hare-brained scheme. What's funny is that, rather than alluding to a wild rabbit, this author had envisioned the term to mean a scheme devised by someone whose brain was full of hair!

A travel guide I edit annually was describing the Jungle Cruise at Disney World:

You'll meet up with head shrinkers, hyenas, water-spewing elephants, and other frankly fake wildlife on this 10-minute boat ride.

I changed head shrinkers to headhunters. The author obviously meant to refer to savages--not psychiatrists!

In a promotional piece for a retirement community called Quail Point, whose slogan is More to do than you could ever imagine, the copywriter had made a typo so that it read More do do than you could ever imagine. Must be all those quail...

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This page last updated on 23 December 2004.

© Copyright 1999 Elizabeth von Radics. All rights reserved.