One of my pet peeves is certificate / certificated used as a verb / adjective:

"Only the New York State Department of Hair-dos can certificate you to be a hairstylist"

or

"The new Cessna airplane is certificated for flight into known-icing conditions"

Unbelieveably, this is actually correct!

Mark, the verbification you dislike, are you talking about using non-words such as "let's conversate!" or are you talking about redefining words like, "I interfaced with Bob." or "Sasha Cohen medalled in the Olympics"? The former bothers me a great deal, but the latter doesn't bother me at all. I think it's part of the dynamics of an evolving language. By the way, my wife jokingly refers to this as "verbing a noun" not "verbification of a noun"

Oh, and P.S., ending a sentence with a preposition is not and has never been grammatically incorrect. It may be considered a weaker form of speech or writing, but never incorrect.

So where are you from myrna?

AAHHH, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. That does make more sense.

gee, I'm confused, myrna. Clearly your poem is defending Canada. The mapleleafs are a Canadian team. Leafsblow is clearly attacking both the mapleleafs, Canadians, and the Canadian military. While Canada is certainly in North America, Canadians rarely refer to themselves as Americans, at least, as far as I know.
Now, I guess Leafsblow doesn't claim to be American, per se, but why would he want to be American? That doesn't even make sense. Thinking of him as someone who wants to be Canadian, THAT makes sense. It means your poem is labelling him as one who is secretly envious of the very Canadians he is slamming, you know, sour grapes and all.

Clearly you have a dilemma. Since you are writing in a formal/academic environment, you certainly would want to make some kind of correction lest you are perceived to be in error yourself.

Using sic rather than changing the quote certainly would be the academically correct thing to do, but you are worried about possibly offending your informant.

I think I have the perfect solution for you. Consider this:

If you had quoted some government report, or some book by a noted author you did not know personally, you certainly would not worry about offending them. You would just use sic and probably even be proud of it.

I can only assume this informant is someone you had personal contact with, otherwise you wouldn't worry about offending them, so here's what I suggest:

Contact the informant again and politely ask if he was referring to "survey" rather than "service" (if you need to be really diplomatic you could even let him save face by suggesting that you may have made a mistake in your notes and that you wanted to check with him again).

After you clear it up with him, simply use "survey" without using sic or any footnotes, etc. The difference is, once you speak to the informant and clear things up, you would actually be quoting him correctly by using "survey". There's no longer any risk of academic dishonesty (however slight), since he actually did say "survey" the second time!!

George, by "American wanna be" I think Myrna is referring to Americans that wish they were Canadians, not explicitly stated, but implied by the context.

Actually, every single grammar book I have ever seen explicitly says that ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct. They also say that it is a weaker form of speech/writing, but never "incorrect".

While it may, trancendence does not NECESSARILY imply anything metaphysical, spiritual or higher plain-ish.

From American Heritage Dictionary 4th Edition (www.dictionary.com):

transcend:
v. tr.
1 - To pass beyond the limits of: "emotions that transcend understanding."
2 - To be greater than, as in intensity or power; surpass: "love that transcends infatuation."
3 - To exist above and independent of (material experience or the universe): “One never can see the thing in itself, because the mind does not transcend phenomena” (Hilaire Belloc).
v. intr.
To be transcendent; excel.

Certainly definition # 3 describes a metaphysical condition, but definition #1 and 2 simply mean to go above or beyond, to excel, etc.

Some other examples, no matter how mundane:
"second only to the need for air, thirst transcends all other biological imperatives"
"You cleaned the garage without being asked; how transcendant!"
"Coke transcends Pepsi"
Maybe I'm being silly, but I hope I've made my point.

Transcendant or transcendance from the same dictionary lists a similar variety of meanings.

I did a quick search of some grammar sites and this is what I found:
Generally, when using a noun as an adjective, it should be singular, not plural. A possessive noun can also be used, but with a different shade of meaning.
We say, vegetable soup, hen house, bean burrito, horse stable, etc. no matter how many vegetables, hens, beans, or horses are present. While unusual, you could say hens' house (etc.) meaning either a house of hens or a house that belongs to a group of hens.
Thus, "writer forum" or "writers' forum" would be acceptable, but writers forum would probably be incorrect. If it is a type of forum then writer. If it is a forum belonging to or made up of writers then writers'.
Writers forum does seem to be commonly used, so I wonder if there is some rule I'm missing or if it's just a lot of laziness.

Dave, that is an interesting observation about unstressed vs. stressed, but I have a small disagreement about collapsing into a schwa. The first syllable of historical, at least the way everyone I know pronounces it, starts with a short "i" vowel sound, not a schwa, and the "h" is aspirated.

When I was in gradeschool (long ago) I vaguely recall learning that saying "an" instead of "a" before an aspirated "h", was less common but completely acceptable in all cases. I'm sure that are many that will disagree or have alternate rules that I am not familiar with.