Common Errors
I’m a grammar and spelling snob - so sue me. To me, language errors are like permanent marker graffiti to an obsessive-compulsive cleaning lady (“…on speed!” - Jay Stone, CanWest News Service!)
I often hear people say configurate and orientate - as the redoubtable Brian’s Errors page at WSU notes in the entry for interpretate, both are incorrect back-formations from the nouns orientation and configuration. The proper verbs being, of course, to orient and to configure.
After all, you don’t figurate something out, you figure it out, right? (And just because millions of people say it, that doesn’t make it right - it makes them extra weak and lame!) ha- HA!
While I was Googling up that grammar gem, I found a Transports Canada page that used configurate. Heavens!I sent the webmaster a brief note to explain the error, and got this in automatic reply:
Transports Canada accuse riception de votre courriel. La
norme de service est de ripondre le plus ttt possible aux
demandes en frangais ou en anglais seulement.
Thank you for contacting us.
Merci d’avoir communiqui avec nous.
General Inquiries / Enqujtes ginirales
Tel / til: (613) 990-2309 TTY/TDD: 1-888-675-6863
facsimile / tilicopieur: (613) 954-4731 / 998-8620
At first I thought their mail server must be located in St. Leonard, but then I realized it was just transposing accented characters: i instead of é, t instead of ?, etc. Nice to know our taxpayer dollars go to a system that can’t even speak ASCII.
December 5, 2003 4:23 PM
