Someone forwarded me an email today in which the author mistakenly referred to herself as a grain protein.

I am a gluten for punishment.

Naturally, this amuses me.

I wager that the collective IQ of the person’s responsible for this ad on Facebook is less than 160.

I don’t know what’s more surprising: the erroneous apostrophe on this sign in the unisex restroom at the Roebling Tea Room (seemingly a more-literate-than-average establishment) or the fact that an overeducated hipster with a pen or Sharpie hasn’t yet corrected it.

Shopping in downtown Laramie, Wyoming, this afternoon, we spotted qualifiers for the Just Because You Spellchecked category. Inquire should have been used on this sign for the Herb House; enquire is for the British and illiterate.

This next one’s ironical appearing in a store selling mostly magazines and books; it should of course be Classic or, really, the non-redundant Literature. At any rate, Ayn Rand doesn’t qualify for either.

This one just makes me snicker. Good gas prices, too.

This isn’t really a Just Because You Spellchecked because it’s plain wrong.

Photographed crappily at the Pax in the lobby of my work building on Eighth Avenue.

I saw a movie poster for the recent stinker Captivity on the C train after work today, and my eye was drawn to the MPAA ratings reasons. These things are great and it’s obvious moviemakers love them, particularly for R-rated movies; they’re meant to warn but they’re essentially mini-reviews that boil down the movie to its essence for any teenager hoping to catch a glimpse of a disembowelment and/or Elisha Cuthbert’s cleavage.

Anyway, as shown in my photo, the ratings reasons for Captivity are

FOR STRONG VIOLENCE, TORTURE, PERVASIVE TERROR, GRIZZLY IMAGES, LANGUAGE AND SOME SEXUAL MATERIAL

Whoops! Unless there really are brown bears trundling amid the ultraviolence, the copywriter meant to suggest the images are grisly.

With four of ’em under my belt, I think it’s time the recurring “Just Because You Spellchecked” posts got their own tag; so let it be written, so let it be done.

I’d like to volunteer myself as the copy editor for the ironic new-vintage T-shirt division of Urban Outfitters, as I am familiar not only with pop-culture clichés but the hortatory subjunctive.

Related: Just Because You Spellchecked... Part II and Part I. Also, coincidentally and oddly, the hortatory subjunctive was in the news this week.

A great story today from the Associated Press. Go here for Part I.

Typo will cost Michigan county $40K

Tue Oct 10, 5:08 PM ET

Grand Haven, MI—Ottawa County will pay about $40,000 to correct an embarrassing typo on its Nov. 7 election ballot: The “L” was left out of “public.”

A total of 170,000 ballots will have to be reprinted.

The mistake appeared in the text of a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban some types of affirmative action.

The word “public” was misspelled one of the six times it appears, county Clerk Daniel C. Krueger said Tuesday. Five or six people in his office had proofread the ballot, but it was an election clerk who found the mistake early last week.

"It’s just one of those words,” Krueger said. “Even after we told people it was in there, they still read over it.”

Nothing makes the editorial department feel so smug as when we spot errors in the writing of coworkers, particularly if it’s unintentionally funny. (We editors also find alliteration funny on occasion. We don’t get out much.) This afternoon, our office manager sent out an email to all staff, advising us that the Pitney Bowes mail metering machine was inoperable and that no mail would be sent out tonight. In closing, she wrote:

I am sorry for the incontinence.

Ha ha! We gave her a standing ovation and recommendations for absorbent undergarments.