I recently received FEMA’s “National Flood Insurance Program Summary of Coverage” with my flood insurance policy statement. I usually ignore government documents unless I really have to read them, but tonight was an exception: an inexplicable impulse to be a responsible home-owner drew my eyes to the page, where I immediately noticed two odd spelling errors. This made me curious enough to read the entire document with some care, and I found 10 (count ‘em, 10) spelling or grammatical errors on the first two pages alone.
Now, I know that FEMA employees are probably overworked and underpaid, like most government employees. Heck, I’m a government employee myself, so I can empathize. But when the first 2 pages of a basic (and no doubt widely distributed) 4-page document contains 10 spelling and grammatical errors, you have to wonder what is going on over there.
Here is the first page of FEMA’s “National Flood Insurance Program Summary of Coverage”. I’ve highlighted the errors in yellow:
1. “…Form. which is…” should be “…Form, which is…”
2. “Your mortgage company require that..” should be “Your mortgage company requires that…”
3. & 4. “…of tow or or more…” should be “…of two or more…”
5. “…above” should be “…above.”
Here’s the second page:
6. “…choose different deductible…” should be either “…choose a different deductible…” or “…choose different deductibles…”
7. “…are covered of the backup is…” should be “…are covered if the backup is…”
8. “Refer to you policy…” should be “Refer to your policy…”
9. “…overage…” should be “…coverage…”
10. “…decks. patios” should be “…decks, patios…”
Notice that none of these errors are of the sort a spelling-checker would detect, although a simple grammar-checker probably would. My guess is that the writer, not having the patience to proof-read the document him/herself, left the job to a mere spelling-checker.
Given that FEMA is now a branch of Homeland Security, one can only hope that such carelessness (dare I say incompetence?) is unusual.
By the way, I don’t think that the writer should singled out for criticism here. Whoever appointed the writer to do this job without checking the quality of his or her work should also be reprimanded. And maybe the professors who gave the writer passing grades in college – surely the writer of such a document would have a college degree – should also be chastised.
Or, am I – a now prickly college professor myself who has grown weary of seeing similar problems in my own students’ writing – just making a mountain out of a mole-hill?