Ranting, but no Raving

I feel that it's time for a rant. People that have read my blog know how much I love to rant about things on occasion. Actually, I would really like it if I could rave just as wildly, but for some reason I'm better suited for ranting than raving. The subject of my rant? Ignorance in Language Arts.

Actually, it's almost more of a case of disbelief.

I don't think I ever really fit the mold of someone that got straight A's in English and spelling back in school--I was mostly into motorcycles and cars--But the truth is: I did. Maybe I didn't feel that I could make any money at it--I dunno. The fact is, I pretty much abandoned it after high school. Maybe I was cocky and felt that I was finished with it. Maybe it just didn't seem cool. Without thinking about it, it has become fairly clear that parts of my studies in those areas never went away. In fact, they may have just been hiding and festering.

I have determined that there is one thing that has bothered me as long as I can remember, and probably will until I can't read or hear any longer. The offense? Failure to understand (or care) about the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE. I'm sure some folks reading this will look at it and say, "Hmm... You know, I never did get how those worked..." and others that will say, "Yeah man, you tell em! I hate that!" I'm not going to explain the difference... I just want to rant about the misuse of it.

Another thing is spelling. Sometimes it's not what was misspelled, but who misspelled it. In this case, it was more of a context thing. I found this on Google News last weekend. I loved it so much I took a screenshot of it. Click the picture below to view the section I saved. I looked at this with disbelief when I saw it. In a roundabout way, it reminded me of the time I was in a local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and was informed that they were out of chicken (seriously). You be the judge:

You get the idea.

Then there is this instance of misspelling at work that has been eating away at me. This is more of a case of people that just flat didn't learn anything in school. The person that labeled these scrap cans probably felt pretty proud of their work, but when I saw the "twin" misspellings I winced:

Maybe not everyone knows what Inconel or Titanium are or how to spell them but I do. Because of my anal nature, spelling abuse that I see on a daily basis eats at me. I have to chuckle every time I see these two bins though, so maybe I should find out who did it and congratulate them on giving me yet another prime example of blog fodder.