Nature: May 2008 Archive Page
May 7, 2008
The Storybook Forest Copyeditor
If your father is an English professor, how do you respond to poorly written signs in a kiddie park?Everywhere I go, I like taking pictures of signs with mistakes that make good classroom proofreading examples.
Shortly after I moved to Western Pennsylvania, I learned that Idlewild Park is the regional version of Disneyland. Every year we get season passes, and a regular stop for us is Storybook Forest -- which my wife remembers visiting when she was a little girl.
Who knows how many generations of children have seen this sign and wondered about the anonymous dwarven sign-maker who claims ownership over the familiar seven?
My son, a voracious reader, takes a scientific interest in words. After getting his six-year-old sister interested in comic books, he helped me teach her about onomatopoeia (notably "thwipp," which every Spider-Man fan recognizes as the sound of web-shooters.)I was quite amused when Peter launched into a critique of the supposedly educational sign pictured below. (The audio file is about 2 minutes long.)
