By Bob Yearick
It’s time once again, dear readers, for a “War on Words” contest. Below are two brief vignettes: “The Parade” and “A UD Romance.” Both are fictional, and both contain many errors, including misused or incorrect words, punctuation that is out of place or missing, incorrect or missing capitalization, and, of course, redundancies. Note: We follow the Associated Press Stylebook here at O&A. And, setting aside the fictional aspect, there is one factual error.
Those brave souls who wish to enter the contest should email their edits to me — ryearick@comcast.net — by March 30. Each entry should be a rewrite of the text below with corrections, which should include anything in quotes. Please highlight corrections in some way — boldface, italics, underline, or colored text. No need to explain the edits.
Two winners will be announced in the May issue of Out & About, and both will receive a $25 gift certificate to an area restaurant.
The Parade
The victory parade started at 10 a.m. in the morning and was comprised of six different high school bands, the Mayor and some other politicians, a group of former Eagles players from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, and then the current team. People along the parade route wore shirts and hats with ‘Go Birds’ or ‘Lets Hunt’ on them. All the players wore their game jerseys except A.J. Brown, who was donning a Saquon Barkley jersey — number 28.
Everyone thinks that Philadelphia fans cause trouble, but that is a misnomer. There were no incidences of lawlessness that day and no one was arrested and interred in the local jail.
Travis Kelce of the Chiefs was in the crowd, and he said he certainly was not ashamed of the way his team had played. “We have nothing to hang our hat on,” he said.
A UD Romance
The world is full of meet-cute stories. Case and point: Betsy and Carl. Betsy is a former alumna of the University of Delaware and Carl is a UD alumni too. They met during their sophomore year when she dialed his number on accident. They started talking, and Betsy mentioned that her rent was in the rears. “Here’s the thing is,” she said, “I accumulated a lot of expenses and let some things fall between the cracks, and then all of the sudden my landlord is at my door demanding to be paid. For all intensive purposes, I’m broke, and I have a pit in my stomach, and it’s not from hunger pains.”
“Listen Betsy,” Carl said, “my bank account is hale and hardy, and I’ll be happy to give you the money you need”.
“Here, here,” shouted Betsy.
After that, they started dating. However, their romance had to endure a gantlet of challenges, including menacing death threats from her former ex-boyfriend. Even still, their love survived and they eventually entered into Holy Matrimony.
Media Watch
• A reader came across a post on X that illustrates the difference a comma can make. The poster had received a wedding invitation that included this dress code: “No white ladies.” The missing comma after white makes it a racist directive.
• Reader Larry Kerchner reports that Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, speaking on MSNBC, made this remark to Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont: “You and your wife have immersed a wealth of over $8 million dollars.” Sanders and his spouse have amassed that wealth, all while immersing themselves in liberal causes.
• A “fan of the column” found a somewhat similar mistake in a recent story in Politico. Headlined “Trump went for shock and awe. Now he’s mopping up,” the story included this clanger: “It all accumulated in a federal judge temporarily blocking the order . . .” No, it culminated in the judge’s decision, which he rendered, you could say, because of his accumulated knowledge.
Literally of the Month
Our Literally Lookout, John McDermott, found two from a single edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
• Mayor Cherelle Parker, remarking on the efforts of her new administration: “We’re literally starting to show results.”
• Long-time sports talker Mike Missanelli, when asked about working as on-air partner with the execrable (and now disgraced) Howard Eskin: “I literally wanted to kill him every day.”
Word of the Month
Peregrinate
Pronounced PER-uh-gruh-nayt, it’s a verb meaning to travel, especially to wander from place to place.
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