Praise the Grammar Vandal

Don’t you just love Kate McCulley?

NPR’s Talk of the Nation introduced me to her last week, and now I’m officially addicted to her blog, The Grammar Vandal. McCulley is a 22-year-old Bostononian who goes around the city correcting grammar mistakes on signs. Her passion is a beautiful thing. She mentions, openly and honestly, during the NPR interview that “bad grammar is a sign of a person who isn’t educated”, and that she considers herself a “vigilante”. Some of her best work includes sticking as apostrophe adhesive on a sign reading “Professors Row”, and raising a local farmer to hero status on her blog for his correctly-worded “Farmers’ Market Today” sign.

Someone needs to employ this woman to travel the world correcting linguistic wrongs. I’d love for her to clean up my town — we’re constantly choking on, among other things, restaurant menus displaying “hamburger’s”, “parmigana/parmagiana/parmagina”, and even, believe it or not, “sapghetti” (it’s written in huge letters on a walkway!). And I thought it was only backwards hick towns like mine that suffered this level of grammar-cancer.

Fight on, Grammar Vandal! We need you.