COSMO NEWS

59 Times People Struggled With Words So Badly, They Cracked Others Up (New Pics)

People tend to get mad at the grammar police online. Yet, sometimespeople's grammarand spelling skills are so atrocious that they're begging to be called out and taught a lesson. According to a 2015 Harris Poll, 80% of Americansconsiderthemselves good spellers.

However, after you scroll through this list, you may find that statistic questionable.Bored Pandahas prepared a selection of funny and equally embarrassing posts where people eitherfell victim to autocorrector skipped grammar day at school. See how a minor mistake can change the vibe of a whole sentence and deliver comedy gold instead of somber, serious news.

Bad grammarcan certainly be funny. Just one comma out of place and a sentence like "Tables are for eating customers only" goes from instructive to ridiculously cannibalistic. It makes you think that people would put a lot of effort into spelling things correctly and puttingpunctuation markswhere they belong. Alas, that isn't always the case.

Ironically, the younger generation is the most irked by grammar mistakes they see in the real world, online, or when texting others. According to the same Harris poll, 74% of people under 35saidthat spelling mistakes on social media were annoying. This may seem surprising, since they're the generation most likely to use abbreviations and are typically associated with laxgrammaronline.

Interestingly, there's also a gender disparity when it comes to who notices grammar mistakes more. Women appear to be more perceptive when spotting bad spelling, with 75% of women saying they often find errors in things like ads, restaurant menus, and store signs. In contrast, 66% of the men in the survey said they spotted grammar mistakes often.

Yet one grammar peeve was consistent among all ages, genders, and professions. English speakers just can't stand it when people can't correctly spell and tell the difference between "their, they're, and there." I have to say, I'm right there with them – and English isn't even my first language!

Different rules apply to texting and messaging online, though. Although only a quarter of Gen Zersadmitthat they use full stops, capital letters, commas, and quotation marks on social media, 69% use correct grammar when texting. Perhaps it's who they are communicating with: texting is often reserved for parents and older people, and social media is how they communicate with peers.

Good grammar matters in the context of dating, too. A 2016 survey from the dating site Zooskshowedthat 48% of people in the dating market consider poor grammar skills a deal breaker in online dating. Interestingly, women seem to have higher standards: 65% said they would stop chatting with a bad speller, and only 60% of men said they pay attention to a prospective partner's grammar.

Still, the majority found obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes to be turn-offs. And it's not just bad grammar that people hate; silly hype words such as "LOL" and "YOLO" were found to drastically decrease response rates.

Our personal lives aren't the only context in which good spelling and punctuation matter. Which CV do you think would be tossed away immediately: one with blatant grammar mistakes or a carefully proofread one? Certified professional résumé writer Drew Roark says that spelling or punctuation mistakes are about more than just grammar knowledge.

"Mistakes on your résumé can expose traits about yourself, which can ultimately keep an employer from offering you a job," Roark explains. "Employers are less concerned about your spelling (knowing you probably just made a typo) and more concerned with the fact that you overlooked an error, which speaks volumes about your tendencies."

What's worse than a bad speller online? Grammar police who love to humiliate those with poor grammar skills and call them out for their mistakes. Research shows, and experts claim that they're not trying to do the world a solid and rid it of grammar mistakes – they're trying to establish their superiority.

According to a 2016 study, introvertsmay bemore prone to correcting the mistakes of others. Apparently, they connect the mistakes to the person's core self, judging their intellect. The researchers also found that the less agreeable the person is, the more likely they are to be members of the grammar police.

A professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Robert Kurzban,explainedto Slate that the grammar police are looking for ways to make themselves feel better. "When people, especially publicly, correct others' mistakes, a lot of that has to do with signaling to other people," he said. "People are trying to signal their expertise, because being able to identify mistakes indicates that you know more about something than the person who committed the error."

What about you, Pandas? How often do you spot bad spelling and punctuation online and in the messages people send you? Or maybe you're the bad speller, and you feel no shame for it whatsoever? Let us know your experiences when struggling with words in the comments! In the meantime, check out thesehilariously unfortunate names parents have given their babiesthat we wish were spelling mistakes.

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

59 Times People Struggled With Words So Badly, They Cracked Others Up (New Pics)

People tend to get mad at the grammar police online. Yet, sometimespeople's grammarand spelling skills are so atrocio...

Brazilian inmates find relief and reduce sentences through reading

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — When 33-year-old Brazilian woman Emily de Souza heard about a program allowing her to shave off four days from her prison sentence by reading a book, she seized the opportunity to reconnect with a cherished habit.

Incarcerated women read books in the library of the Djanira Dolores de Oliveira women's prison in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Joseane Silva de Oliveira, who is incarcerated, reads a book in the library of the Djanira Dolores de Oliveira women's prison in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Incarcerated women participate in a reading program part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's

Emily de Souza cries during a program part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's

Incarcerated women leave after participating in a program part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro's

Brazil Prison Books

Like tens of thousands of detainees across the country — including former PresidentJair Bolsonaro— she signed up for a sentence reduction program that encourages inmates to immerse themselves in literary works in exchange for reducing their sentences by up to 48 days per year.

The possibility of reuniting earlier with her 9-year-old autistic son, who her mother and aunt are looking after, only ramped up her motivation to participate in the project.

"One day is an eternity because it feels like it's never going to end," said de Souza, who is incarcerated at the Djanira Dolores de Oliveira Women's Prison inRio de Janeiro, which houses approximately 820 female detainees.

Reading is "a kind of escape, to get out of this environment for a bit, to think about other things: other stories, other people, not just me," she said.

Like most of her fellow inmates, de Souza was sentenced for drug-trafficking. She said she received five-year prison term for selling a cannabis-infused Brazilian chocolate treat known as "brigadeiro" in Portuguese. She arrived last November, but hopes to progress to Brazil's semiopen prison regime in August, which would allow her to leave prison during the day to work.

Brazil, which has one of the highest per-capita incarceration rates in Latin America, stands out for having one of the most formalized and nationwide systems for sentence remission via reading in the world. The rapidly growing program, which was first formally regulated in 2012 and then standardized acrossBrazilin 2021, received renewed attention earlier this year after the Supreme Court authorized Bolsonaro — who is servinga 27-year sentencefor attempting a coup — to take part.

'It helps us a lot'

Andréia Oliveira, coordinator of female prisons and LGBTIQ+ inclusion in Rio state's prisons, said that access to reading programs and schools helps the individual once they have left prison — but also society. "When we encourage education, ludic activities, knowledge, we return to society someone who can reconnect, respect rules," she said.

Since 2022, literature professor Paulo Roberto Tonani has been conducting workshops in prisons so detainees in Rio can benefit from the measure.

Participants choose or are given a book in the initial kick off activity. They then discuss their book in the next encounter and finally, in a third meeting, they produce a review or a drawing that demonstrates comprehension.

Detainees have read "Captain of the Sands" by renowned Brazilian author Jorge Amado, "Crime and Punishment" byFyodor Dostoevskyand "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker.

A much-loved favorite of participants is the illustrated book "Father Francisco," by Marina Miyazaki Araujo, which tells the story of an incarcerated father from the child's perspective, said Tonani. Many detainees in Brazilian prisons are from a poor background and did not complete basic education.

Some participants in the late March workshop at the Djanira Dolores de Oliveira prison were reading "Unsubmissive Tears of Women" byBrazilian writer Conceição Evaristo— including Celina Maria de Conceição, a 50-year-old woman originally from the northern state of Pernambuco.

De Conceição, who took part in the workshops last year and signed up again, said she developed the taste for reading thanks to the project.

"It helps us a lot because we're locked up and it gets very stressful, very noisy," she said. "We get to go to somewhere else, interact with other people and talk about good things, like the book we're studying."

Unequal access

But she said she had to put down Evaristo's book, which exploresthe impact of violenceon Black women's lives, after it upset her.

"It wasn't good for me, because it stirs up our emotions, and we're in a place where the environment is already truly heavy," she said.

Brazilian prisons are renowned for overcrowding and harsh conditions. In 2023, the Supreme Court recognized mass human rights violations in the prison system and ordered the federal government to develop a plan to resolve the situation. Called "Just Punishment," it was launched in 2025 and among other goals seeks to expand study and work opportunities.

While progress has been made, access to earning time off by reading remains unequal across Brazil, said Rodrigo Dias, head of education, culture and sport in the country's National Secretariat of Penal Policies.

In thenortheastern state of Alagoas, some prisoners were handed aKindlewith 300 literary works on them, whereas other, more conservative states have heavy bureaucracy which hinders access, Dias said.

A 2023 government report found that some 30% of Brazilian prison units do not have libraries or adequate reading spaces. But Dias pointed to the secretariat's data, which shows that the number of remission requests via reading has increased sevenfold since 2021.

Like de Conceição, once people began participating, they often want to continue. "The book gives them the possibility to dream, and often to 'talk' with other people — not those who are imprisoned or working in the facility, but with the characters in the stories," Dias said.

'More than a mistake'

While Elionaldo Fernandes Julião, co-author of the book "Sentence Remission Through Reading in Brazil: The Right to Education in Contest" and a professor at the Fluminense Federal University, underscores the importance of accessing books in prisons, he argues that oftentimes Brazil's sentence reduction programs through reading are used as a substitute for developing access to education, which is much more costly.

Julião also said that access to the policy and books often depends on local projects. "Unfortunately, these are very easy to eliminate or shut down as quickly as possible," he said.

During the recent workshop, de Souza read out loud a poem written by formerly imprisoned Argentine writer Liliana Cabrera. One of the lines affirms the narrator is "Also something more / than the letters in black / of a court case."

De Souza shared that the words resonated deeply.

"Someone knew how to explain with beautiful terms (…) that I'm a lot more than a court case, a lot more than the mistake I made, that I'm a human with my story," she said.

Follow AP's coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean athttps://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

Brazilian inmates find relief and reduce sentences through reading

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — When 33-year-old Brazilian woman Emily de Souza heard about a program allowing her to shave off fou...

Trump's Iran war is at a fateful fork in the road

One month in, President Donald Trump's war in Iran is at a crossroads.

Journalists work at the site of a car repair shop and dealership damaged by a strike amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, on March 28. - Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency/Reuters

Afast-escalating conflictcould widen further with the injection of US ground troops and cause a worsening worldwide economic conflagration.

Despite Trump's insistence that Iran and the US are having "productive" contacts, there is no sign either side has the political dexterity to end the war. Iran has denied direct talks are taking place. America's ally Israel, while expected to fall behind Trump if a ceasefire is reached, seems more reconciled to the prospect of a longer engagement.

But the high costs of the showdown for the United States and the Islamic Republic also give reason to hope the war could be reined in before it gets even worse.

Pakistan took the initiative on Sunday by leading anascent third-party attemptwith Middle Eastern powers to look for a way out. The effort has a daunting mandate: bridging antithetical endgame demands of an erratic US president and an Iranian regime defined by hatred of America.

This war has already shown the US and Israel have devastated Iran's air forces, navy and much of its ability to pose existential external threats. But they've so far failed to eradicate the revolutionary regime that has haunted both countries for decades. At issue now is whether anyone can build an off-ramp that might deprive either side of a knockout but offer political and strategic carrots for each to claim vindication.

US Navy sailors stand watch on the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford as it transits the Suez Canal, en route to support the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran on March 5. - US Navy/Handout/Reuters

Trump claimed on Sunday night that the US and Iran were talking indirectly and directly and that Tehran had agreed to "most of" the 15 demands Washington had made to end the war. He didn't give specifics, and his assertions were impossible to verify.

He also appeared to be building a misleading template for a total US victory, arguing that the killing of senior Iranian leaders including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei equalled "regime change," even if there'd been no letup of vicious repression of civilians whom he'd previously pledged to protect.

"We've had regime change, if you look already, because the one regime was decimated, destroyed, they're all dead," the president told reporters aboard Air Force One. "The next regime is mostly dead, and the third regime, we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before."

It's impossible for outsiders to get full visibility into Iran. But the best estimate of many Iran experts is that while many top clerical and military leaders have perished, the regime previously decentralized power to ensure it could survive high-profile assassinations and still appears to be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

On Sunday, Iran warned the US against any ground operations on its territory. Its defiance has led some analysts to conclude that Tehran — despite being critically outgunned — has now seized the strategic initiative. It certainly doesn't look like it's desperate for a "deal," as Trump claims.

Trump's initial timeline is under pressure

Iran's regime saved itself with classically Trumpian move: It weaponized a point of unique leverage for economic and geopolitical gain by closing theStrait of Hormuz— an oil exporting choke point. Economic reverberations are piling pressure on Trump inside and outside the US, as Iran becomes the latest adversary to counter America's military superiority with an asymmetric response.

The war has already surpassed the lower marker of the "four to six weeks" timeline initially sketched by the administration. Trump's still-hazy rationale for waging war is matched by his inability to point to an off-ramp. The closure of the strait and Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium, meanwhile, make it hard for him to use a characteristic device — a unilateral declaration of victory. He's therefore facing a bleak decision with tragic echoes in modern American warfare: whether or not to escalate the war in search of a way out.

An aerial view of the Iranian shores and the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz on December 10, 2023. - Nicolas Economou/Reuters

Still, the pain that both sides would endure if the war went on means there are plausible reasons to talk.

Iran is isolated; has become a pariah in its own region; and has absorbed cataclysmic damage to its military capacity. While it has shown a continued ability to hit Israel, US military installations and American-allied Gulf states with missiles and drones, its resources are finite and it badly needs sanctions relief to rescue a shattered economy.

A halt to fighting might allow Iran to lock in its goal of regime survival. And by demonstrating that it can close strait, it might have created a deterrent effect if either the US or Israel wanted to restart the war.

Trump has good reasons to end the war too. His approval ratings are diving, stocks are plunging andeconomic distressis mounting among midterm election voters already struggling to pay forfoodandhousing. The conflict jars with a dominant principle of his "America First" movement — no more foreign wars. And his second term and presidential legacy risk being consumed.

Conditions for a way out do exist — at a pinch. The question is whether a US president who has hardly lived up to his claim to be the world's greatest negotiator and a remnant Iranian regime that has seen its top leaders wiped out can show the skill and will to provide each other a face-saving exit.

President Donald Trump salutes during a dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base on March 7. - Nathan Howard/Reuters

The war is expanding — not dying down

The need for fighting to stop was laid bare as the war expanded at the weekend.

Yemen's Houthis — an Iran-backed militia — launched a missile attack against Israel in their first major move of the conflict. There were no casualties, but the move raised concerns that another key shipping route could be under threat.

"I think the Houthis starting to strike, if you will, that's going to become the Western Front of this war," retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, told CNN's Michael Smerconish. He said the Houthis' ability to control maritime traffic headed for the Suez Canal while the strait is closed was "an enormous gun pointed at the head of the global economy."

Houthi supporters demonstrate in solidarity with Iran in Sanaa, Yemen, on Friday. - Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

This could exacerbate economic impacts already being felt, and that are likely to worsen as the last ships that left the Persian Gulf before the war reach their destinations. In one sign of the global impact of the war, the Philippines has declared a national energy emergency amid rising political unrest.

In other signs of escalation, at least 10 US service members were injured in an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Iran vowed to target US and Israeli universities, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to carve out an expanded security buffer zone in Lebanon.

Against this dire backdrop, the most concrete diplomatic initiative so far played out in Islamabad. Pakistan hosted talks involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt. It's a rare nation with strong relations with Washington and Tehran. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a statement that his country "will be honored to host and facilitate meaningful talks between the two sides in coming days." Two Trump administration officials told CNN last week that discussions in Pakistan were possible. But there's no confirmation that they are imminent.

Foreign Ministers Badr Abdelatty of Egypt, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Ishaq Dar of Pakistan and Hakan Fidan of Turkey meet to discuss regional de-escalation in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. - Turkish Foreign Ministry/Handout/Reuters

The possibility that fighting will intensify seems to be rising

The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying Marines, has arrived in the region. Another Marine Expeditionary Unit is en route from the US West Coast. More than 1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne have been ordered to deploy.

The buildup is far short of an invasion force. But analysts talk of a possible assault on Kharg Island — the epicenter of Iran's oil industry in the northern Persian Gulf — or other strategic islands critical to cross-strait navigation. Another ultra-high-risk US mission could aim to snatch Iran's stocks of highly enriched uranium that might allow it to reconstitute its nuclear program.

But the possibility of heavy US casualties in any ground battles is sharpening debate over the war back home, where even some lawmakers loyal to Trump are worried. Democrats are meanwhile warning against an escalation.

"There's a reason why Donald Trump is not coming before the American people for approval for this war. It's because he knows what the American people feel, which is that they don't want this, that they want a government that is focused on them, lowering costs," Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Demonstrators take part in a "No Kings" protest against President Donald Trump's administration policies in New York City on Saturday. - Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

Those potential costs on the battlefield and at home only underscore the president's unappetizing options and the gamble he took by deciding to go to war in the first place.

History shows most modern wars end more messily than presidents predict when they launch them. Even if Trump now opts for diplomacy over escalation, this one now threatens to undercut his bullish claims about the invulnerability of US power and his own global dominance.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

Trump’s Iran war is at a fateful fork in the road

One month in, President Donald Trump's war in Iran is at a crossroads. Afast-escalating conflictcould wide...

COSMO NEWS

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

59 Times People Struggled With Words So Badly, They Cracked Others Up (New Pics)

Brazil Prison Books

'It helps us a lot'

Unequal access

'More than a mistake'

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

Brazilian inmates find relief and reduce sentences through reading

Trump's initial timeline is under pressure

The war is expanding — not dying down

The possibility that fighting will intensify seems to be rising

byCosmopolite

in

March 29, 2026

Trump’s Iran war is at a fateful fork in the road

Search This Blog

Labels

Blog Archive

Total Pageviews

Popular Posts

TODAY MAG