Anybody who knows me is sometimes annoyed by my "gifts". I can spot spelling errors on papers Law & Order detectives are scanning. I am a nutcase about grammar and truly believe there is a time and place to use "lay and lie" and I work hard to end sentences with anything but prepositions. I take pride in editing, editing, editing until a sentence or paragraph sounds exactly right. Pride does indeed goeth before a fall as I learned to my chagrin today.
Rob Hill is our Advisor Talk host. He's smart as a whip and as you can tell from his blog a pretty darned good communicator. He submitted this blog with the title Mistakes Were Made. What he didn't bargain for was being tagged as the mistake maker. Fortunately Rob also has a great sense of humor and we had a good laugh.
Moral of the Story: If I had spoken the title it would have sounded like "Mistakes Were Made. By Rob Hill". That's what I heard in my head. But you can't hear me and have to rely only on the words. Be so so careful when you're writing a letter, an email, an employee review especially when you're in a hurry. One careless sentence can cause a lot of unintended misunderstanding.