Posts Tagged ‘typo’
“There Are Two Typos Of People In This World: Those Who Can Edit And Those Who Can’t”*…
Typos can be embarrassing. They can also be costly. And not just for those individuals whose jobs depend on knowing the difference between “it’s” and “its” or where a comma is most appropriate. In 2013, bauble-loving Texans got the deal of a lifetime when a misprint in a Macy’s mailer advertised a $1500 necklace for just $47. (It should have read $497.) It didn’t take long for the entire inventory to be zapped, at a loss of $450 a pop to the retail giant. (Not to mention plenty of faces as red as the star in the company’s logo.)
Google, on the other hand, loves a good typing transposition: Harvard University researchers claim that the company earns about $497 million each year from people mistyping the names of popular websites and landing on “typosquatter” sites … which just happen to be littered with Google ads…
From a NSFW travel agency ad to “the most expensive hyphen in history”– “10 very costly typos.”
* Jarod Kintz
###
As we check our work, we might send carefully-edited birthday greetings to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, AKA Mark Twain; he was born on this date in 1835 in Florida, Missouri. One of the best-known writers and aphorists of his time and ours, his The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is consistently cited as a (if not indeed the) Great American Novel, at the same time that it is equally consistently the target of censors who would ban it from school and public libraries… but not for sloppy editing or typos: Clemens began his career as a newspaper man– first as a typesetter, then as a reporter, where he honed his copy editing skills. And he carried those skills with him into the use of new technologies: he was the first author to submit a typewritten manuscript to his publisher.
Matthew Brady’s photo of Mark Twain
“There are two typos of people in this world: those who can edit and those who can’t”*…
We all make mistakas…
- The Wicked Bible (as it’s come to be known), published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas in London, offers an unusually permissive version of the Seventh Commandment
And some are funnier than others…
Webster’s chemistry editor, Austin M. Patterson, sent in a slip reading “D or d, cont./density” in 1931; but it was misinterpreted as a single word– and published in the second edition of the New International Dictionary in 1934. It was not removed until 1947.
The preface of The Vocabulary of East Anglia, by Robert Forby, 1830
Further funny faux pas at “The Most Disastrous Typos In Western History.”
* Jarod Kintz
###
As we relax into Labor Day, we might pause to contemplate the commemorative and celebratory occasions sprinkled through the first month of Fall…
|
SEPTEMBER is . . . National Bed Check Month, Read-A-New-Book Month, Mom & Apple Pie Month (Massachusetts), Cable TV Month, Latino Heritage Month, Be Kind to Writers & Editors Month, National Mind Mapping Month, Pleasure Your Mate Month, Board & Care Recognition Month, International Gay Square Dance Month |
|||
|
1st Week |
2nd Week |
3rd Week |
Last Week |
|
Self-University Week Independence Week (Brazil) National Religious Reference Books Week Aarmus Festival Week (begins 1st Sat; Denmark) |
La Merienda Week National Mind Mapping For Project Management Week Fall Hat Week National Housekeepers Week Battle of Britain Week (Week w/15th) |
Tolkein Week National Singles Week Vitupertion Week (18th-24th) National Laundry Workers Week National Adult Day Care Center Week |
Banned Books Week National Food Service Workers Week National Dog Week National Roller Skating Week National Mind Mapping For Problem Solving Week National Pickled Pepper Week (begins Last Thurs) |
|
September Movable Daily Holidays |
|
|
Day |
Holiday |
|
1st Sunday |
Working Mother’s Day Pffiferdaj (Day of the Flutes; France) Giostra del Saracino (Joust of the Saracen; Italy) |
|
Saturday before Labor Day |
Capital Day |
|
1st Monday |
Labor Day Settler’s Day (South Africa) Buhl Day (Sharon, Pennsylvania) Great Bathtub Race (Nome, Alaska) Box Car Day (Tracy, Minnesota) |
|
1st Saturday |
Indian Day Braemar Highland Gathering (Scotland) |
|
1st Sunday after Labor Day |
Grandparent’s Day |
|
1st Saturday after Labor Day |
Federal Lands Cleanup Day Yellow Daisy Festival (Stone Mountain Park, Georgia) |
|
1st Saturday after Full Moon in September |
Indian Day (Oklahoma) |
|
2nd Sunday |
National Pet Memorial Day |
|
2nd Sunday (every other year) |
Bruegel Feesten (Belgium) |
|
2nd Friday after Labor Day |
The Big E begins (New England’s Great State Fair; Maine) |
|
3rd Sunday |
World Peace Day Pig Face Sunday (Avening, UK) |
|
3rd Tuesday |
International Day of Peace (UN) Prinsjesdag (Netherlands) |
|
4th Sunday |
Good Neighbor Day |
|
4th Friday |
Native American Day |
|
4th Saturday |
National Hunting & Fishing Day Kid’s Day (Kiwanis Club) |
|
Last Sunday |
Gold Star Mother’s Day |
|
Sunday before Michaelmas (29th) |
Carrot Sunday (Scotland) |
|
16 days from late September ending on 1st Sunday in October |
Oktoberfest begins (Germany) |
|
Sunday before October 2nd |
Tap-Up Sunday |
And all of this is not to mention such red-letter days as Eat an Extra Desert Day (September 4), Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), or Hug a Vegetarian Day (September 26)…
Party on!
You must be logged in to post a comment.