Grammer vigilantes are on a mission: Eradicate typos

After leaving New Mexico and driving into Arizona, Benjamin Herson screamed in rage.

He had just passed an abomination, a crime against nature, something so egregious that it shook his very core.

So Herson and his college buddy Jeff Deck, traveling across country in a '97 Nissan Sentra, sped to the sight.

When they arrived, they jumped over a barbed wire fence and stared.

It was ugly. A giant sign with an errant apostrophe as big as a human head.

So out came a piece of yellow chalk to cover up the offender. The repulsive "Bring your cameras' " became a more agreeable "Bring your cameras." The world was safe from one more example of bad punctuation.

For the past three weeks, this has been Herson's work, a mission. Its part vacation, part vocation.

Herson, a 28-year-old from Virginia Beach, has ridden around America as part of the Typo Eradication Advancement League rotating team that's out to correct the countries grammar and spelling mistakes - at least temporarily. Wednesday marked Herson's last day, before other member's join in. The league's trip is expected to conclude in mid-May, and Herson may meet up with it again before then.

As of Friday, they'd spotted more than 120 errors and corrected more than 70.

Everything and everyone is a target. (Except for cities with high percentages of people for whom English is a second language. That would be unfair, Herson conceeds.)

"Anybody can make mistakes," he said. Somewhere - with all the e-mail syntax and text message-speak - people "sort of stopped caring about grammar."

So Herson and Deck, who met at Dartmouth, have taken action.

Herson was planning on spending a good part of April hiking the Appalachian Trail when Deck, an editor at a publishing house, asked if he wanted to go across country in search of typos.

"That was all he really had to say," said Herson, who was working at a Borders bookstore in Silver Spring, Md., at the time.

Now the two are staying at hotels or in hostels or with friends' or camping at night; delivering the hyperliterate from groans during the day.

That sign for 1-pound cookies? Yeah - they aren't giant cookies that would take three days to eat. It's supposed to say 1 pound of cookies.

Those "bowls" Herson's mother spotted in a local grocery store? It shouldn't have been spelled b-o-w-e-l-s.

And that T-shirt in Vegas that read, "Hookers Limo Sevice"? The Typo League made sure to let management know that perhaps it should have read "Hookers Limo Service."

"It's a wrong righted," Herson said.

Herson and Deck carry an eradication kit with them, ready to add a "t" or an "s," or to erase an apostrophe or white out an extra letter. They hand out business cards. They work they're magic.

"Bread puding" becomes "Bread pudding."

"The Good Stuffs In Here" becomes "The Good Stuff's In Here."

Teachers are writing in to say they use the blog to help students pick out misteaks.

Herson is not deluded about the legacy of this journey.

"Clearly I'm not going on a trip to end the Iraq war."

The chalk on the "cameras'" offense will wear off.

Typos are aplenty. Billboards, posterboards for restaurants, roadside tourism signs will always be ripe for errors.

"We're not expecting to stamp out typos," Herson told me from San Diego before heading to Los Angeles.

In a perfect world, the perfect world wouldn't be quite as fun. And besides, now there trip includes a possible book deal.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277 mike.gruss@pilotonline.com

Editor's note: Mike filled this column with lots of typos, intentionally. Tell him which ones you found on his blog.