Can You Spot the Error?

Jan 11, 2014

RAY: A long-time customer named Pell Osborne was at the shop a few days ago and he brought his young son William along. While we discussed Pell's car, William was looking around the shop and within a few minutes, he saw that the sign that had been hanging up there for twenty years had a punctuation mistake.

He said, "That sign's not right." I was embarrassed. But his dad explained that it was kind of a hobby of his son's to find either grammatical or punctuation or spelling mistakes. So, I took the kid in the corner and gave him a couple of noogies to his head, and I got him to give me a puzzler.

This is a word puzzler. I am going to read three sentences. There's a mistake in one of them. And I'm going to try to read them as clearly as I possibly can.

A recent space shuttle mission almost ended in disaster.

While the shuttle and the international space station were engaged in their docking operation, the two crafts almost collided.

A quick thinking crew member saved the day.

What's the error?

Answer: 
RAY: Sentence number two has the mistake.

I'll read it again.

"While the shuttle and the international space station were engaged in their docking operation the two crafts -"

TOM: Ah ha! It should be, "craft."

RAY: Exactly right. There's no "S" on the end of "craft" unless you're at, say, an Arts and Crafts show. So, who's our winner?

TOM: The winner this week is Rev. James D. Richardson from El Paso, Texas. Congratulations!

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