I saw this in an email message a few days ago.

Problem:
The noun is incorrect.

Explanation:
The complete sentence was “We all need to put our thinking gaps on and come up with some thoughts on how we can bend the curve.”

The message writer was asking readers to think of ideas that could change the shape of a trend line.

The correct noun to follow “thinking” is “caps” — spelled C-A-P-S — not “gaps” — spelled G-A-P-S.

The message writer created a self-negation with his error with just one letter in just one word, given that a “thinking gap” (with a “g”) is effectively the opposite of a “thinking cap” (with a “c”).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “thinking caps on” — 128,000 matches
• “thinking gaps on” — 4 matches

This tells me that Web authors have very rarely made the mistake that the email message writer made.

Solution:
“… put our thinking caps on …”