Grammar cop Margi Keys.
Pop quiz: What's wrong with these sentences (answers at end of story) ?
1. Illegally parked vehicles towed away at owners expense.
2. Capiscums $1 each.
3. Modern tech with old fashion service.
4. Tennants vehicles only.
Margi Keys knows the answers.
She's a grammar vigilante and is on a crusade to correct poor public signage.
The above examples appear on signs in and around Whanganui and contain either spelling or punctuation errors - or both.
Her tools of the trade are chalk, a duster "really an old pair of knickers" and a permanent marker.
Her pet hates: Incorrect use of apostrophes, spelling errors, and other grammatical nonsense.
"It's instead of its, your instead of you're, there and their, then and than, too many exclamation marks," she rattles off a long list.
For several weeks Margi has corrected mainly chalk signs on sandwich boards.
She says signs with errors are endemic throughout the city.
Down at the River Traders Market one Saturday she found 10 signs with either spelling or punctuation errors.
Margi doesn't do what she does out of spite, rather from a love of the English language.
"Our beautiful language is being dumbed down," she complains. "Signs are important, they convey important messages. Errors can sometimes change the meaning entirely."
"Corrections annoy people. They feel hurt, or dumb, and that's not my intention.
"Not everyone is a natural speller and I'm not trying to put them down for that.
"But when you publish, or put up a public sign, there comes a responsibility to be correct."
Not surprisingly Margi has a background in teaching - and enjoyed marking exams.
But it was another grammar vigilante in Bristol, United Kingdom, who was her inspiration to strike out with a sharpie of her own.
Wielding an 'apostrophiser' - a broomstick with sponges and stickers - the unidentified grammar vigilante corrects badly punctuated shop signs in the dead of night.
Margi's friends now send her, via Facebook, examples of poor grammar.
People don't know what they don't know, she says. By drawing attention to correct grammar she hopes she may somehow have a positive influence.
Margi has not been confronted by sign owners, yet, but has received criticism on her Facebook page, but says her cause is just. "Court cases," she says "have been lost on incorrect punctuation."
Margi says she is not perfect and makes mistakes all the time. Smartphones and auto correct have a lot to answer for she says.
In one text message that she sent to a friend the word bigger became a similar word only with a u instead of an i, and another friend sent her a text complaining of a crock in her neck.
Answers:
1. owner's expense (apostrophe).
2. Capsicums (spelling).
3. old-fashioned (grammar).
4. Tenants' (spelling and apostrophe)
.
Taranaki has 277 farms with consent to discharge effluent into waterways.