My kind of comic

XKCD is a comic for all kinds of geeks, intellectuals, nerds, mathematicians, developers, linguists, polymaths, and other brainy types. If you read The Writing Rag with any regularity, you would probably like XKCD, too if you don’t already subscribe. Here’s the link to this strip http://xkcd.com/1010/

And here’s the strip. You have to go to the actual site to see the alternate text (that pops up when you hover the pointer over the picture).

They say an etymologist is someone who knows the difference between etymology and entomology

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I read the funnies. They were my favorite part of the daily paper when I was a kid, and now I read them online regularly. I recently realized  that I never see a mistake in grammar in a comic unless the mistake is deliberate. Many strips have a row of buttons underneath so you can look at earlier or later episodes. Even the button that you click to see the previous comic is correct. It says “Previous,” not “Prior.”

What caused me to realize the rarity of grammar mistakes in comics was when I saw one recently. Scott Meyer writes a very funny comic. His comic, Basic Instructions, is one of my favorites. The humor is at once subtle, and to me, anyway, hilarious.

Full disclosure: He fixed the goof. If you go to his site, you'll see the corrected version.

You see the mistake, right? (It’s the first “you’re” in the last panel.) A lot of people mix up words that sound alike, and getting “your” and “you’re” wrong is a favorite for sixth-grade English teachers to pounce on. In Scott’s case, I’m pretty sure it was a slip of the fingers since he’s obviously a professional.

The lesson here is to proofread your writing. Make sure you don’t accidentally write something you don’t intend.

PLEASE tell me that you get this. OTOH, tell me if you don't, and I'll explain it.

And no, the joke is not that those are really shamrocks on her grave. I saw this in the comic Rubes, by Leigh Rubin. The link to his comics is here: http://www.creators.com/comics/rubes.html, and I recommend subscribing to the RSS feed. Here’s a link to his bio: http://www.creators.com/comics/rubes-about.html.