Grammar Vigilantes Get Their Comeuppance

PHOENIX When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense.

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park's Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.

Deck and Herson, both 28, toured the United States this spring, wiping out errors on government and private signs. They were interviewed by NPR and the Chicago Tribune, which called them "a pair of Kerouacs armed with Sharpies and erasers and righteous indignation."

An affidavit by National Park Service agent Christopher A. Smith said investigators learned of the vandalism from an Internet site operated by Deck on behalf of the Typo Eradication Advancement League, or TEAL.


So you have these two officious twits going around the US with Sharpies and white-out, cleaning up grammar and spelling errors on government signs. We've all seen this sort of person on message boards and online forums; they're the ones that, instead of focusing on the argument at hand, point out errors in spelling and grammar, sometimes because of pure motives (there's a lot of illiterates populating message boards) and sometimes not so pure (inferring that an opponent is a moron because their spelling is deficient). In this case, they were caught by their own stupidity in wanting recognition of their achievements.

If you commit a crime, even out of the best of motives, it's best not to mention the fact on the internet.

This blog post not checked for spelling or grammar.