Publisher's Notebook

A big six-foot monument to the Ten Commandments was placed on the grounds of the Oklahoma state capitol on Thursday, three years after it was authorized by the state legislature.

Two problems with that. Three if you’re the Oklahoma ACLU, but more on that below. It has spelling errors of biblical proportions.

The monument urges Sooners to “Remember the Sabbeth, and keep it holy.”

And another commandment states, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidseruent.”

State Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, dismissed the errors to the words “Sabbath” and “maidservant” as no problem.

“It’s a simple fix,” he told The Oklahoman. These kinds of errors are “not uncommon with monument manufacturing.”

Try telling that to a judge if you file a motion or brief riddled with errors.

Ritze was the guy who pushed the monument in 2009, sponsoring the necessary legislation. It passed the House, 83-2, and the Senate, 38-8. Sixteen legislators were, um, absent when the vote was taken.

The monument, which cost about $20,000, was paid for entirely with private funds and Ritze’s family will pick up the tab for maintenance.

Opponents, meanwhile, may lawyer up. The ACLU in Oklahoma is mulling a lawsuit challenging the monument as a violation of the separation of church and state.

Proponents will be ready. Ritze said a group called the Liberty Legal Institute, which recently helped to defend a challenge to a similar monument in Texas, stands ready to help.

Presumably all parties will use spell check before filing anything with a court.

The word of the year for 2012, according to Oxford University Press, is “GIF.” Go figure.

A 20-some-year-old word from technology, it stands for “graphics interchange format,” and most designers will tell you that GIF pictures have long since been eclipsed by JPGs as the medium of choice.

But according to the Associated Press, GIF was the word this year because it made the transition from noun to verb.

“To GIF” means to create an image or video, then post it on the Internet. All kinds of GIFs are online, from funnies about the election to pricelessly cute kittens to stuff from the Olympics.

The top word in the United Kingdom, according to the OUP, was “omnishambles,” a term describing a complete and total series of blunders, such as the state of the British media or its gaffe-prone government. At least they’re not GIF-prone. Yet.

The selection of GIF as the word of the year already has prompted some controversy. Katy Waldman, who writes for Browbeat, a “culture blog” at Slate.com, sniffed that it’s not even a word; it’s an acronym. And it’s so last century, Waldman noted, despite its 2012 morph into a verb, and no one much knows how to pronounce it.

For the record, don’t use a hard “G.” The proper pronunciation of “GIF” is “jif,” not unlike a certain brand of peanut butter.

Waldman observed that 2012 produced any number of possibilities overlooked by the OUP: malarkey, double down, fiscal cliff and Obamacare, among others.

The Brits apparently got it right about their own word of the year. As Ross Hart commented below, “The British have done it again. ‘Omnishambles’ is a lot more polite than that “cluster” phrase that’s so common . ..” Indeed.

Waldman’s suggestions notwithstanding, the Oxford Press dons said the runners up in the U.S. include “superstorm,” a weather term applied to Hurricane Sandy when the storm somehow no longer was a hurricane, and “YOLO,” a carefree social-media acronym for “you only live once,” as opposed to a certain James Bond movie from about 1967.

In honor of Election Day yesterday:

“It won’t mean a thing if they don’t win that swing”

In which newspaper did this one appear?

Actually, none — it was the winning entry in a headline-writing contest run by the Newseum, the DC-based museum for journalism.

A woman named Tara Jones sent in the winning entry, posted on the Newseum’s Facebook page, in a contest seeking a headline about the importance of swing states in the election.

President Obama no doubt would join in congratulating Jones…he took six of the seven closely watched swing states yesterday on his way to victory.