Ammon Shea 
recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon reflects on Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson’s unusual editing actions.
A pair of purportedly well-intentioned young men who have an avowed interest in fixing our language have recently proved to me that the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions (or at least self-righteous ones), but also that this road has the capacity to be rather expensive.
According to a story last week that ran in the Associated Press, and several other gloating publications, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson ran afoul of the law after they had completed a several-week long quest, during which they crossed a wide part of the country, fixing many typographical and grammatical errors that they found on various signs. They appear to have mostly done so with the knowledge of those who owned the signs. But supposing you are a young man, brimming with vigor and the dissatisfaction that comes from overmuch reading of the Chicago Manual of Style, and you come across a sign that is positively reeking of poor grammar, with no visible owner in sight – what then do you do? Well, you take out your magic marker and fix it.
And then you brag about it on your blog.
Unfortunately for Deck and Herson, the sign in question happened to be hand-painted by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who had designed that which the sign described – a 1930s watchtower in the Grand Canyon National Park. They have been ordered to pay a fine of $3,035, and are banned from fixing public signage or entering national parks for a year.
According to the Associated Press, “Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson “discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors.”” Deck then proceeded to ‘fix’ these errors, which amounted to a misplaced pair of apostrophes and an added comma, but neglected to fix the far more egregious spelling of the word ‘emense’. Said Deck in his diary “I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight.”
Personally, I believe that Deck will be haunted by the absence of the several thousands of dollars more than he will be by the alternative spelling of this word, but maybe I’m wrong. In fact, I sincerely hope that I am wrong – I would love it if this self-righteous prig were haunted in his dreams, tonight and for many nights to come. Because I would like to point out to him that the sign he saw is hardly the only incidence of immense being written ‘emense’. It comes up in the OED - Caxton used it in Eneydos in 1490. And a quick perusal of Google Books shows that it was use in the Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and also in Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (by Joanna Baillie in 1821), and also in 476 other sources listed. If Mr. Deck has the courage of his convictions, and if his diary was telling the truth, it would be appropriate if he has ‘train-whistle-blighted dreams’ once for every one of those 478 emenses found in Google Books.
When I lived in Queens, there was a nail salon just down the street from me, with the wonderfully improbable title on its awning ‘Hannah And Her Sister’s Nail’. Every day I walked by this store on my way to the train. And every day as I did so I imagined that somewhere in the back of the store Hannah sat arguing with her sister’s nail, or perhaps asking the nail if it wanted a cup of tea. The misspelling gave a personality to the store that an ordinary nail salon could never have, and in being so in need of fixing it managed to make me smile every day.
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Ashraf Ghani has taught at Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, and Kabul University, worked at the World Bank, served as Finance Minister of Afghanistan, and been credited with a range of 
successful reforms in Afghanistan in the years following 9/11. He is currently the Chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness. Clare Lockhart is Director of the Institute for State Effectiveness. She has worked for the World Bank and the UN and played a key leadership role in developing the National Programs approach to Afganistan’s reconstruction efforts. Together Ghani and Lockhard wrote Fixing Failed States: A Framework For Rebuilding A Fractured World, which explains through vivid on-the-ground examples why past attempts to rebuild states have failed and advance a groundbreaking new solution to the crisis. In the original article below they outline what makes a successful state. Listen to a podcast of Ghani at the Carnegie Council here.
Given the historical and geographic variability of state functions, it might seem bold to declare that there are ten of them (why not nine of eleven?). Nevertheless, based on our reading of history, our engagement with international development, and our first hand experience with the challenge of state building in one of its most difficult contexts, we have concluded that states in the world today must perform the following ten key functions to succeed.
1) Rule of Law
The most crucial function of the state is law making (i.e. establishing the rules by which society operates). Laws define both the powers and the limits of the state and the people within that state.2) A Monopoly on the Legitimate Means of Violence
State controlled use of violence (military/police activity), encompasses three distinctive elements. Complete authority over the means of destruction and the use of force. The legitimacy needed to subordinate violence to the decision making process (voting/elections/laws). And in extreme cases, the use of force, according to the rules of law, against those citizens of the state who challenge its legitimacy.3) Administrative Control
The state must establish a bureaucratic system of checks and balances. A system that is managed by governmental professional who are accountable to the citizenry. Each division of the government performs specialized functions, has continuity over time, and is overseen at a higher level.
4) Sound Management of Public Finances
Create a budget and stick to it! A proper budget brings both the rights and duties of citizenship into balance. Each entitlement must have a line of expenditure and each expenditure must be matched by a source of revenue. The key elements are wealth creation and involvement of the citizenry in taxation and redistribution.
5) Investment in Human Capital
Among the many investments are the creation, development, and growth of institutions of Higher Education and the availability of a national healthcare infrastructure. Health and education produces a mentally and physically vital citizenry, which is in turn crucial to a successful state.
6) Creation of Citizenship Rights Through Social Policy
Empower citizens through equal opportunity. When the state uses social policy as an instrument for the establishment of equal opportunities, the social fabric created can lead to a sense of national unity and a shared belief in common destiny. Key social policy starts with the right to vote, and extends into regulating labor practices and establishing fiscal welfare programs.
7) Provision of Infrastructure Services
The state must provide everyday necessities such as adequate transportation, power, water, communications, and pipelines to establish its overall ability to produce less mundane functions such as security, administration, investment in human capital, and the necessary conditions for a strong market economy.
Formation of a Market
The state must support the creation and expansion of an open economic market through three major measures: setting and enforcing rules for commercial activity, supporting the operation and continued development of private enterprise, and intervening at times of market failure.
9) Management of Public Assets
Every state has three areas of natural resources to oversee: the management and allocation of rights to land and water, the sustainable use of natural capital, including extractive industries (i.e. mining and drilling), the management, and protection of the environment, including forests, and the licensing of industrial commercial activities.
10) Effective Public Borrowing
Put simply, do not take on bad debt or take on too much debt. Beware of the sovereign guaranty from international lenders. Maintain public disclosure and monitoring of the fulfillment of debt obligations.
The performance of these ten functions produces a clustering effect. When the state performs all ten functions simultaneously, the synergy creates a virtuous circle in which decisions in the different domains reinforce enfranchisement and opportunity for the citizenry. This supports the legitimacy of the decision makers and their decisions, builds trust in the overall system, and thereby produces a “sovereignty dividend.”
Conversely, when one or several of the functions are not performed effectively, a vicious circle begins: Various centers of power vie for control, multiple decision-making processes confuse priorities, citizens lose trust in the government, institutions lose their legitimacy, and the populace is disenfranchised. In the most extreme cases, violence results. This negative cycle creates a “sovereignty gap.”
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Sorry if I’m being dense — what is the misspelling in “Hannah and Her Sister’s Nail”? All I see I see is an ambiguous coordination ([[Hannah and her sister’s] [nail]] vs [[Hannah] and [her sister’s nail]]) that makes for a rather cutesy name — and from the context would seem to be the source of your amusement.
Lewis and/or Clark are also fond of the rather charming spelling “tremendious”.
As I worked with the unassuming and witty Jeff Deck at a scholarly publisher, I can say that he is as far from a prig as you are from even-handed journalism. If you had listened to the NPR piece and seen the ABC News piece on Deck’s journey, both of which occurred long before the AP piece, you would have seen and heard that Deck asked permission from those who owned such signs to make his corrections, and you would have gained a better sense of Deck’s character and background. The reaction in the editing community, weary of constant “it’s” for “its” and similar mistakes, has been a hearty “you go, Jeff.” I would suggest performing a little research on your subjects before you write about them so you can avoid jumping to erroneous conclusions.