The 10 Greatest Misspelled Tattoos

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• Today's young people live in a very auditory culture -- they don't pass notes in class, they text each other according to phonetic shorthand, so they are used to writing according to how a word sounds. I think that's the main reason for "should of" instead of "should have" or similar sound-alike mistakes. But I very rarely encounter a student who simply cannot make the transition between informal phonetic shorthand and polished collegiate prose. (It just takes time and practice.)

• It saddens me that people can be so terribly educated in the grammar of the english language that simple differences between "its" and "it's" are completely forgotten. And so often do I see "your" and "you're" mixed up that I want to kill someone when I hear them make such a mistake. A mate of mine got a leg tattoo recently that had a quote from a band called the Maine. It should have read "Fresh 'Til Death." Unfortunately the artist was such an idiot that when he designed it, he spelled it "Fresh Till Death." Unfortunate.

• I went with a friend in high school to a tattoo parlor. She wanted one on her back. I held her hand the whole time as she cried herself senseless. Not that I ever wanted one anyway, but that was the anti-tattoo for me. Perhaps we should market a grammar book for tattoo artists and sneak it into a magazine or something.

• I suppose it just puts things in perspective -- reminding me that some people would rather sit still while a stranger repeatedly pokes their skin with a needle, rather than look in a grammar book to refresh their memory of the "its/it's" distinction. Couldn't they look at the grammar book while the artist is doing the blood drops? I mean, what else can they do while they're lying there on the table?

• Oh my, how annoying is that? Too bad tattoos (and spelling errors) are forever.