Real Errors on Social Media #16
Can you understand the very simple error? It isn’t racist!
There was recently a true-life news topic based on this very error. I will post it here later, after you have had a chance to consider what the error above actually is…
The correct sentence is “Don’t wear black, people!”
By “people” he/she means “everyone”, so he/she is saying that black isn’t a good fashion sense. Perhaps it was for a specific situation.
The missing comma is very important.
Here is a real example of this: here
The parking rules on a signpost said no overnight parking for “motor vehicle camper, bus, motorbike (etc.)”. Unfortunately, it should have read “motor vehicle, camper,…” so a car owner parked overnight and got a penalty fine. She protested, saying that her car isn’t a “motor vehicle camper”, and a judge agreed with her.
There is a famous joke about this:
A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he finishes eating the sandwich, the panda pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter, and then stands up to go. “Hey!” shouts the manager. “Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn’t pay for your sandwich!”
The panda yells back at the manager, “Hey man, I am a PANDA! Look it up!”
The manager opens his dictionary and sees the following definition for panda: “A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterised by distinct black and white colouring. Eats shoots and leaves.”
Perhaps the panda didn’t read it clearly. He apparently thought it said, “eats, shoots and leaves.” The dictionary meant that the panda “eats shoots” (bamboo shoots) and it also “eats leaves” (plural of “leaf”).