Where Eagles Dare To Edit

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Eagle-eyed AAUGH Blog reader David noted that for this year’s Peanuts desk calendar, they’re reformatting the 1971 strips into narrower panels… and that’s not the only change.

Original and calendar versions of the January 16, 1971 closing Peanuts panel
Click to enlarge

Check the last few words – where the original January 16, 1971 strip had said “just walk around”, in now says “just walkS around”. (And for the detail-oriented: that new S is copied from the one in the word “those.”)

Schulz wasn’t fond of attempts to correct the grammar his characters speak (which makes sense – fictional characters need not speak perfect grammar. Most of us don’t.) And if he got ticked on this one, he’d be in the right. The original panel is grammatically correct. Presumably, the person who edited this thought that the “just walk around” phrase was supposed to agree with “the one.” If Snoopy was thinking “the one eagle who walks around,” that would be right. But in this case, the phrase is linked to “those eagles”, which is plural, so “just walk around” is right.

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