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From The Times

 

August 25, 2008

 

Vigilantes of TEAL wage war on signs of American illiteracy

 

 

 

James Bone in New York

 

 

A campaign by two grammar vigilantes to correct mistakes on signs across America has come to an abrupt end after they were charged with vandalism for trying to rectify a spelling error at the Grand Canyon.

The founders of the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) have been banned by a court from correcting any publicly owned signs after trying to correct one on the Desert View Watchtower that, for seven decades, has drawn attention to an “emense westward view of the Grand Canyonâ€. Oblivious to grammar, the prosecutors pronounced the sign “a unique historical object of irreplaceable valueâ€.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, both 28, met in a creative writing class. The two graduates of the Ivy League Dartmouth College teamed up after Mr Deck, from Somerville, Massachu-setts, had an epiphany in the shower. Misspellings on his shower curtain inspired him to try to make a better world by travelling the nation to correct errors with a fix-it kit of magic markers and correction fluid.

A star of high-school spelling competitions, he worked on Dartmouth’s student newspaper and honed his editing skills in a temporary job at an academic publisher. He invited Mr Herson, then working in a bookshop outside Washington, to join him in a round trip of the United States.