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Photo by Lee MacMillan
A sign in South Bend, Indiana.
Sometimes, a thin letter can make a big difference.
So it was in South Bend, Ind., where a billboard celebrating the school system misspelled public, as in ‘public school.’
According to the South Bend Tribune, the error was spotted Saturday by a local resident while she sat in traffic.
By Monday, responsibility for the blooper was claimed by Blue Waters Group, which was working with the South Bend redevelopment commission.
“I feel terrible. It’s a mistake we made, and we’re guilty of it, and responsible for it, and we take full responsibility for the error,” Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group, told the Tribune.
He noted that the typo was not the fault of the city or of the school system.
The sign, which rotated with other adverts in the billboard, was fixed by the end of the day.
Leave a Comment:
Pfft lol.
Liberals are tryiing to blame Bush and Conservatives know it was Obama's fault.
WHAT??? It's not Clinton's fault???
Obama has been in office only a year and "Rational American" is already blaming him. The real truth is Bush and his administration that screwed things up for all Americans. Besides, any speed reader would have missed that.
Obama has been in office only a year and "Rational American" is already blaming him.
Only a year? You must of went to that pubic school.
KSte - "You must of went to that pubic school"
It's "you must HAVE went to that pubic school."
Levity people! Levity. Sometimes it would be refreshing if people would stop trying to paint one side or the other with bad brush strokes. There are situations where politics CAN be left out. This is one of them. The sign was plain funny, no matter what the political affiliation of the people putting it up was.
it's actually "you must have GONE to that public school"
Duh
No $hit Sherlock! You didn't even get the point.
I blame Wilkie.
It has to be Dan Quayle's fault! You know, the whole potato/potatoe thing. Or should that be the "ENTIRE" potato...whatever!
KSte, how long has Obama been in office? It took Bush and company eight years to screw everyone. Obama said that it would take 12 years to clear up Bush's mess. It took Gov. Ann Richards to clear up Bush's mess here in Texas and now it's Obama's turn. We've seen Bush in action here in Texas long before he became president. The rise in gas prices the year before he left office was to line his pockets even more and you fools still defend him. The only reason Obama can't do any good for our educational system as well as other things is because republicans from the house and senate keep blocking good changes for the American people.
something funny. how refreshing. :)))))
Anyone who has been around teen's and even pre-teens would find this "bloop" to be ironic.
To err is human, to admit it and accept responsibility is unusual in this day and time. Good for the agency but funny for the rest of us.
Epic Fail
More people will know it and remember it because of the typo than if it had been correct
It's not the first time I've seen this type of thing. The public works department guys in the town right next to mine painted the school crossing, "shcool crossing". It was cool...
This must be where my friend went to"shcool" . Every fall she ask "when does the kids go back to schoo".
Makes me "Knuts"
Skeeter that is so funny. Love your frustration.
Before my Dad died, he had a care giver, that although she was wonderful too him, could not spell. I would get a shopping list from her to get their groceries and with out sentences to put her words into context, it got really confusing. I spent an hour one time looking for "mike" at the store. It was also very embarrassing, approaching strange men and asking if they were Mike. I got a lot of date offers though.;-) Turns out she just wanted milk. My bad. LOL
Even though most people should know that it was just a typo from the advertising company. But the irony is sooo funny.
Deb - your story made me giggle and want to share a hysterical email I got from a salesman working to sell me a dishwasher. It turned out that what I had ordered was going to be delivered more than a week after my original pick up date and I was none too happy about it. He sent me a letter stating that he was "sorry I was incontinence" instead of sorry I was inconvenienced. It still has me laughing!
My neighborhood school just repainted the staff parking spots. They painted "principle" instead of "principal" and "coonselor" instead of "counselor".
The contract for the paint job went to the lowest bidder.
I bet this whole incident made some people crotchety.
Those sign painters couldn't really stand back to admire their work.......
I normally would have assumed the picture of the billboard was just a clever Photoshop job. It's even funnier knowing it was real.
Let's hear it for 'public' education (and let the snickering commence!).
Love it.
Our small town (50,000) has a large university, two small colleges, and a very robust and excellent school system. A large portion of the population makes its living grading papers. I've noticed that the street crews and construction companies have to be very careful about the spelling on their construction notices. If they do make an error, it will be corrected very quickly! Funny stuff.
50,000 in your "small" town? I'm sorry, but if there are more than 10,000 people, it's not small. In fact, you're half way to being a city (100,000). Or is that 50,000 residents actually 5,000 residents with 45,000 students? I admit that these numbers are completely arbitrary, but I grew up in a small town of 6,000, in a county with a single city of 150,000.
@flylowguy....its electronic
Debra....so true. It goes to prove that there are some people in this country that take accountability for a true error. Nice to see that people arent up in arms wanting to fire the entire school board! LOL.....
Interesting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bet their web traffic was up for a while.
Too bad they didn't misspell the web addr. also: southbendover.com
I can't believe someone would have the ballz to do that.
It's a bit ironic that MSNBC points this out, given the growing shoddiness of their own proofreading standards.
+1, Thank you for pointing that out BruceGee. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds it sadly ironic.
For a leading online news site to have the amount of errors it does (on a daily basis) should be ashamed of itself. I know things happen fast in this sort of business, but geez, how much time would it take to have a proofreader check the article...even if it's already online.
I've reported spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, whole paragraphs repeated, factual errors, and most of the time my emails are totally ignored and the mistake stays for the life of the story.
Maybe MSNBC's sponsors should consider taking their business to a classier joint (venture).
deleted
LOL *snicker*
Remember those huge neon Arby's Roast Beef signs with the hat (maybe some still have it)? Picture the o & s not lit up at night....yum.
Shame there weren't cell phone cameras back then. They fixed it quickly.
That kind of error is inexcusable! I wouldn't be surprised if this is a hoax that MSNBC fell for. I've worked in the ad industry for years, and I guarantee that the error was not just "spotted Saturday by a local resident while she sat in traffic." An error like that doesn't just miss the eyes of the designer, proofreader (if there was one), printer, even the team that puts up the billboards. I'm calling BS on this one.
Oh, I beg to differ. The designer never sees the finished product, the proof reader (@ the printer) could very easily missed using a spell checker, the printer didn't read it because of the size ( he just checked overall quality of print), the installers don't care what's on it ( just make sure it's on, installed properly). That just leaves us with the lady in traffic. Your guarantee is moot.
I live in the South Bend area and saw it. It is not BS. The person that took the photo is friends with the superintendent out the SB school corporation and contacted him about it immediately. However, they decided to submit the photo to the South Bend Tribune as well.... the rest is history. Go to the website and see for yourself: www.southbendtribune.com
OH... and this was not a printed ad.... it was on an ELECTRONIC billboard.
Well, I LIVE here, and it was up. Albeit not for long. It was, indeed, up.
Thanks for the feedback. Knowing that it is an electronic billboard helps because fewer people typically look at something digital in the creative process(no printer, proof rounds etc.) , and making a change is much faster to something digital. Still pretty astounding that this made the actual billboard. Thanks all!
It's obvious that too many people count on "spell check" and similar software to correct their mistakes. If you read the news or even the vine you regularly see the results of this dependency. I suspect that even the most literate professionals have a few bloopers in their work history :)
I was a victim of a similar mistake a few years ago when spell check was first becoming popular ... our department had been given the lead on a physical plant upgrade that was expensive and fairly controversial in the community ... I was given the assignment of handling public relations for the project ... an administrative assistant had sent out a group/"all user" e-mail to over 200 people advising them that I was going to be the "PUBIC Relations Officer" for the project! Despite an immediate correction in a followup e-mail ... the first notice was posted everywhere for what seemed like a very long time before everyone finally had their fill of chuckles over it. A simple mistake like that will help you find and embrace your sense of humor to it's highest level! The young lady that was responsible for the error was laughing so hard that it was difficult to believe her apology :)
I used the spell check feature on this comment and it skated right past PUBIC with no hesitation!
And a spell checker would not have caught this.
Bafoor i tuk da Eblyn Wood speelin curse , i cud nut speel garaduite. Now, i r one!
I work in advertising. How the heck does a typo like that get to print and on a frikin' billboard. Some body got fired.
The same way 'Afghanistan' was on the front page of a newspaper twice. Once spelled correctly, once without the 'h.' The same way "THIS IS WHERE THE CUTLINE GOES." gets printed instead of the actual cutline in hundreds of papers and magazines. Error. Oversight. Laziness.
And for my own opinion? Bwahahahahaha!!! That's fabulous!
From what I know of billboards, they are posted in the fashion of wall paper hanging on the wall. the people who put the graphics up my not necessarily care what it says. They only have to post the graphics.
The billboard never "got to print" - it's an electronic billboard. Once I heard that, it made much more sense. I admit to having made the exact same typing error on a couple of occasions - fortunately I proofread my emails before I send them, so I was able to correct them.
bae1980:
"frikin" ? Translate please.
Oh I love it, something fun and light..... Keep it coming and lets not loose our sense of hummer. ;)
Ever wonder how many people read this billboard and didn't notice it?!?