Pedantry

What? Me a pedant?

No way. I’m simply someone who thinks people should
spell and write the Queen’s English as I do.

I guess it’s inevitable. I’ve spent years teaching high school students how to avoid the ubiquitous apostrophe, explaining the difference between stationery and stationary, and wondering why they can’t distinguish between practice and practise.

And there’s my Mother’s influence. Mum was still doing
The Age crossword in her 90’s and she was so concerned for accuracy in language that she once wrote to Barry Jones
pointing out that he had incorrectly used the subjunctive in a speech.

What hope then did I have of avoiding this affliction of
noticing spelling and grammar mistakes in a thousand places?
I call it an affliction because I don’t particularly enjoy
seeing these mistakes and I would be happy to overlook them
but my eye seems to be drawn unerringly to confectionary,
potatoe’s and all those other indications of human fallibility.

You won’t be surprised by my reaction to the notice in our
local park, where on my daily ride I glimpsed a shiny new sign, laminated on stone, with some five words on it. I had eyes for only one…..CEMETARY. I headed for home to check
my dictionary, wondering if, in my years of teaching year 8
Spelling, I had missed an alternative spelling. No, there was no
alternative. The new sign, in all its pristine glory, was wrong.
I rang the local Council and gently pointed out the mistake,
expecting that my short message left as a note on someone’s
voice mail would be enough to effect a correction within the
week. Days passed into weeks but the sign remained unchanged,
bringing a daily shudder as I trundled past on my old Malvern Star.

Three months later, in a further bout of civic responsibility,
I phoned again, this time giving more precise information about
the location of the sign. In a hardly subtle attempt at blackmail, I
suggested that local teachers would soon be bringing students to inspect the sign in a SPOT THE MISTAKES assignment,
hinting that this would not be good for the Council’s image

The sign remained, untouched……CEMETARY.

Months later, I put my concern in writing and sought a reply.
I wrote a detailed and respectful letter, including a map, and requested that the matter be brought to the attention of the
appropriate staff member.


And an answer came directly, with a promptness unexpected,
and I felt that I was making now some progress with the sign. In
speaking with the writer of the letter, who was most welcoming and
not at all defensive, I discovered that faults in signs are not altogether
rare and that the cost of changing this particular sign was hundreds of dollars. I enquired whether he would prefer me to creep round in the cover of darkness and make the necessary change at no cost to he Council. It was, after all, simply a matter of changing an A with an E. Assured that the change would be made, I felt my mission was accomplished. But still nothing happened.

Months passed.

Then, one day, I was shocked out of my resigned state when I
glanced on the way past the offending sign. It was offending no
longer. Someone , presumably an official, had corrected the spelling and it glowed in the morning sunlight….CEMETERY.


On reaching home I rang the Council officer and poured out my
gratitude. He was grateful for the call, but in his honesty he said he
was unaware that it had been fixed.

So, I continue my daily rides, no longer irritated when I pass
the sign. Rather, I am cheered by the experience which not only saw a correction of an official mistake but which also increased my
appreciation of the complexity of fixing signs and my respect for one
Council officer.

With people like me on the loose, we need people like him in
our municipal offices.

Mac Nicoll