“This velvety wine is smoot
and redolent with the aromas of blackcurrant and vanilla.”
OK, I’m making that up. Not the whole thing, just everything except “this wine” and “is smoot.” For some reason I blanked out the rest of the sentence on the label.
I come from a line of typo-hounds on my father’s side. I don’t no how long a line, because both my paternal grandparents dyed bee four I was borne. So eye cant say weather they were similarly endowed/afflicted.
Butt aye don’t suppose my father’s ability (to characterize it charitably) came out of the blew. Certainly four all the years that eye new Dad and was old enough to take notice — say, 1957 (when eye was 5) until 2010 (when he dyed at 88) — aye watched hymn point out typos in newspapers, books, and menus, and, of coarse, on sines. I have know memory, however, of hymn ever finding a typo on a wine label.
Won year at university, my class was highly annoyed bye a professor who assessed a penalty for spelling miss takes in our papers, but not for typos. He figured he could tell the difference. My father agreed, but eye did knot.
Sure, sum miss takes look more like speling errors and some look more look typping fmbles or jumblse, butt others are knot sew clear. And as Ann editor, aye don’t much care, either. They all have too bee fixed.
But yew no, what’s interesting hear (eye no yew’ve been waiting fore me to reach this point), anyway, what’s interesting is that years ago aye red (or maybe herd) that men bye wine with hi ratings and women bye wine with pretty labels.
That day, with a nod to my departed father, eye bot a wine not inn spite of, butt because of, a label with a typo. How could aye resist finding out four myself weather it was smoot?
And the answer is (and aye no yew’ve been waiting four this two): Know, knot really. What can eye say except that sum miss takes are much, much worse than typos.
Well neuw, oyve bin waitin’ fer tis and neuw oyve got it.
Tom
Tom – LOL. I wish I could reciprocate in koind!
AAAAGH – I could barely read it!!!
It was like listening to a singer who is flat or sharp. Makes me go all goosey-tass. Please don’t do that again.
Barbara – Maybe that’s how I can monetize my blog: Get people to pay me not to write in certain styles. Great idea!
How appropriate this piece is for the beginning of the school year when countless teachers will face student offerings much like yours!
In the early years of our marriage, when we had the propensity to imbibe, if not the pence to imbibe extravagantly, I saved the pretty labels from the wine bottles. Long past the time when we could indulge those propensities, I turned the labels into decoupage projects to improve surfaces of wastebaskets and gift boxes. I wish I had them back to test the veracity of that claim about which one of us chose particular wines. Now, I associate restraint in graphic style of labelling with the more expensive wines, but that could be a trick of memory.
Laurna – I suspect that there are almost as many reasons for choosing wine as there are choosers: maybe more, given that how I choose can vary, day to day. Not that I’m buying wine every day. And I’m not sure who makes the artistic judgement that a given label is pretty . . .