Name that error

Do you know what it is? Written about recently here on Verbavores:

This on top of the “irreverent” shoes business. Hey Outside, hire a copyeditor. (Checked back later and it has been fixed.) However, having once let something go to press with the phrase “garden gait” in it, who am I to criticize?

It’s in the gene pool: My sister copyedits the 7-layer bean dip. “What do you suppose ‘cheese what’ is?” Discussion ensues.

There’s also that matter of the “acidj.”

*

And beware Muphry’s Law.

was is the was?

offered without comment:

One of the wronger things I’ve read lately, from TheAtlantic.com:

Still, Kennedy’s essay shows a profound, if unintentional, understanding of the primary value of attending an elite school: status and personal connections, rather than mastery of academic skills and knowledge. [emphasis mine]

Really? That’s the primary value of attending an elite school? Sorry, no. This is the sort of cynical comment I’d expect from my students, not from “a senior associate editor at The Atlantic” who “oversees the Education Channel.” I graduated from an “elite” college, and I can assure you that four years dedicated to the life of the mind was exactly the primary value of that experience for me.

These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem—these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves.

Arrant Pedantry on “12 mistakes nearly everyone who writes about grammar mistakes makes”

(This is the one that always peeves me: 1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage.)

Just when I was preparing to get snarky about this:

I saw this:

She went as she wanted to go. But still, that should be “lay”: