Sadly, most typos are boring, such a "adn" for "and" and the like. However, every now and then we miss-type a word and it forms another word that fits into the sentence and takes it in an entirely new direction...

Here's a few examples thought up at random to start with:

Friend Fiend
Lots Loss
United Untied
Married Marred
Marital Martial
Milestone Millstone
Inducting Indicting
Deifying Defying
Brother Bother
Recital Rectal
Annal Anal
Public Pubic
Park Pork

Ah, but even the boring adn for and variety can cause confusion.
Are you familiar with PG Wodehouse's "Printer's Error"

Vescere bracis meis.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Ode to a Spellchecker

Eye halve a spelling check her;
It came with my pea sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye kin knot sea.

Eye ran this poem threw it
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.

A check her is a bless sing;
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule;
The checker pours o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

Bee fore wee rote with checkers
Hour spelling was inn deck line,
Butt now when wee dew have a laps,
Wee are knot maid too wine.

Butt now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite,
Of nun eye am a wear.

Now spelling does knot phase me,
It does knot bring a tier;
My pay purrs awl due glad den
With wrapped words fare as hear.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud;
And wee mussed dew da best wee can
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

That's why eye brake in two averse
Cuz eye dew want too please.
Sow glad eye yam that aye did bye
This soft wear four pea seas.

When at last I'm dead and gone
I'd like my work to linger on,
To last, to echo down the ages
In volumes full of well thumbed pages
Not just on the internet
(Where surfers find and then forget)
Typed up by my own weak hand
And seldom just the way I'd planned.

For I've a flaw (yes it's true !)
My typing sometimes goes askew
Where I intend to type one letter
My fingers think another's better.
For example, intending praise
I might write a simple phrase
"CJ's the man he's the best"
But what if I should spell it "pest"?

Or how would my word be taken
If one day I am mistaken
And instead of "RE knows his beer"
Put down that he blows his rear ?
Or suggest not, as I'd mean
That TrossL, double dactyl queen
Is really quite a clever lass
But miss the "l" and praise her ass?

Would shufitz really understand
That it wasn't what I'd planned
If instead of "Kalleh's ode is fine"
I put "Kalleh's so divine"?
I think I ought to take more care
To check the things I've written where
A careless slip I don't intend
Can make a fiend out of a friend.

Bob Hale, 21/3/03

Vescere bracis meis.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

Four comments:

1.) I enjoyed both B.H.'s and P.G.W.'s pieces on this subject. Well done, guys!

2.) The "now/not" typo is the basis of a favorite riddle: "Can you take the newspaper headline The new school is now open and replace just one letter with another to change the headline's meaning 100%?"

3.) National Public Radio did a piece on this subject not long ago which focused, in part, on the temptation to deliberately insert into text what would appear to be an innocent typo for the purpose of humor. They reported that they even have a specific computer program that they run all their writing through before it leaves their offices to ensure that at no point do they refer to themselves as "National Pubic Radio," an "error" they said they had caught on more than one occasion.

4.) I forget the fourth comment but I am sure it was brilliant.

CJ, you must be the guy who said, "The penis mightier than the sword."

Bob, both your writing and your Wodehouse link are among the funniest things I've ever read. I'm rolling here.

In the chatroom I chat in, there is one participant who is so famous for her typos that we say she has created her own language!

I wonder when it becomes a typo, rather than just not knowing how to spell the word.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I wonder when it becomes a typo, rather than just not knowing how to spell the word.

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I agree with the AHD's definition: "A mistake in printing, typesetting, or typing, especially one caused by striking an incorrect key on a keyboard."

Too many people pass off their misspellings and uses of the wrong word (e.g., "your" for "you're") as typos. They're not typos; they're careless mistakes! Read and reread your copy and correct your mistakes. If you have any doubt about the spelling of a word, look it up. The dictionary is as close as your keyboard.

Tinman

Sum say atenchun two speling is over-wreighted hear, know?

Hey, Kalleh, are typos the most common type, followed by typeas, typebs, and typeabs?

I was absolutely outraged by the editing in our small, local paper yesterday. There were so many typos that I wondered if it was April 1st!

One of the classics, was an article stating that a vote passed in a town meeting giving the supervisor funds to use for a specific project. The amount? "$300,00" Now...is the comma supposed to be a period, and it means she has $300.00 to spend, or did they miss a 0 and it is $300,000.00 or did they slip the comma into the wrong place and it is supposed to be $30,000.00? So much for information in the news!

I was in a chat room once with some teachers and we got to talking about PTA meetings. For those of you who don't know, that stands for Parent-Teacher Association. It is a time when parents get together with the teachers of their child and discuss how the child is doing in class. At one point, one of the teachers meant to type "there was a good turn out". What he ended up typing was "there was a good turn on". That certainly perked things up and everyone wanted to know what that was all about. Well, he went on to say that he had made a typo but we insisted that it wasn't and also insisted he tell us about it.

He proceeded to make up a story about meeting the mother of one of his students and finding himself very attracted to her. He told of asking her to his home so that they could better discuss little Johnny's work. He even went so far as to get the two of them into the bedroom but then said that was the end of the story. I don't think I laughed so much about one little typo as I did that night.

quote:

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Too many people pass off their misspellings and uses of the wrong word (e.g., "your" for "you're") as typos. They're not typos; they're careless mistakes!

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I completely agree with you, Tinman. Your example is a good one, but there is also "there" for "their" or "it's" for "its". I cannot accept those as simple "typos".

In a report on the graduation of a D.A.R.E. class, my old home town weekly stated that there were several extinguished [sic] guests, among them the main speaker of the evening, the Rector of the local Epistable [sic] Church.

My Letter to the Editor asked what kind of dope the Editor was using, and wasn't the Fire Chief put out to know that he was not among the extinguished guests?

In another column was the announcement of an old folks' gathering in Hockerville. It stated that the invitation was going out "to anyone who lives or ever has lived." [sic, sic, sic]

The Publisher responded to my Letter(s) saying that "almost all of the errors in our paper are simply typos."

.... ooo-kay!!!

quote:

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The Publisher responded to my Letter(s) saying that "almost all of the errors in our paper are simply typos."

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Yeah right.

Even if they were "simply typos", does that make it any better? Shouldn't he try using proofreaders?

quote:

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Originally posted by jerry thomas:
The Publisher responded to my Letter(s) saying that "almost all of the errors in our paper are simply typos."

---

I like that "almost".
It leaves open the possibility that the others are deliberate mischief. "Extinguished" sounds too deliberate to be an error.

Vescere bracis meis.

Read all about my travels around the world here.
Read even more of my travel writing and poems on my weblog.

quote:

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"Things are really bad down there." said Moore, when commenting on the conditions in Uruguay. A country her and her husband, Theodore, visited in 1975.

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Now, is this poor editing?

I am extraordinarily busy at work today, and, truly, I wasn't going to log in. However, I just had the funniest experience and had to write about it. It didn't seem worth a new thread so I put it here, though it is a bit misplaced. I wrote the following sentence before proofing, and I agree with my grammar-checker that it isn't a good sentence. However, look how my grammar-checker changed it:

Original: There are still a few people whom I haven’t been able to reach, though I will be finished by our meeting.

Not so good, I know. But, hey, I hadn't proofed it yet.

Suggested change by my trusty computer:

There are still a few people whom I haven’t been able to reach, though my meeting will finish me.

That it will, probably, if I don't get off this site and back to work!

I turn off most of the grammar check options since they often cauase problems like this. I suspect this rubbish was created by the "passive voice" detector.

Am I right in my assumption that US English speakers dislike the passive voice?

It is to be hoped that the use of the passive voice is not seen to be incorrect by those whose understanding of its merits is believed to be incomplete

Richard English

quote:

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Originally posted by Richard English:
Am I right in my assumption that US English speakers dislike the passive voice?

It is to be hoped that the use of the passive voice is not seen to be incorrect by those whose understanding of its merits is believed to be incomplete

---

It's not that we dislike it, R.E., but rather that the active voice is preferredover the passive in the states. Sadly, this is another one of those "RULES" that once someone gets it into their head there's no shifting it.

I totally agree with you that the passive voice has its much deserved place in both formal and informal writing. The tendancy of Americans to avoid it may be a reflection of our national character. After all, if it were the passive voice that we overused, would we be in Iraq today??

Good point, Richard. Yes, CJ is right that those who teach writing always criticize the passive voice. I have never really thought about it before, but now I wonder why. Perhaps it is clearer to say, "Kalleh took out the garbage", rather than "the garbage was taken out"--and less wordy than to say, "the garbage was taken out by Kalleh". However, oftentimes in professional articles, the passive voice is quite common.

It's probably a US/UK difference - in culture as much as language.

The passive voice allows a speaker or writer to distance him or herself from the statement and thus to remove some of its directness.

My own deliberate use of the passive in my phrase, "...It is to be hoped that the use of the passive voice is not seen to be incorrect ..." sought to demonstrate this.


Converting this phrase into the active voice would result in something like this: "...I hope that you don't see the passive as incorrect..."

Thus, the phrase involves, very directly, you and I and could be confrontational.

Kalleh, your comment about the common use of the passive in professional articles is an example of this ability of the construction to distance the writer from the statement.

For example, an auther could say, "...the use of force in these circumstances is usually considered incorrect..." and nobody could take specific exception. However, if the author were to say "..it is usually incorrect to use force in these circumstances..." then that is a statement that the author is making and one which he or she must be prepared to defend if necessary.

The British are usually considered to be less direct and confrontational is verbal encounters than are the Americans and this, I suspect, is why we have differing attitudes to the passive voice.

Richard English

Thus, the phrase involves, very directly, you and I and could be confrontational.
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R.E, ought you not to have said, "...you and me," rather than "...you and I?" Are they not both objects of "involves?"

Indeed it should. And, what's more, there should be a comma before the final "and".

Put it down to four pints of Young's bitter at lunchtime!

Richard English

Put it down to four pints of Young's bitter at lunchtime!
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At least you have a legitimate excuse! I just reviewed my lagniappe thread and found two typos, which I have now edited, and I was drinking nothing more potent than water when I wrote it. Of course, if memory serves me well, the Russian word for "water" is "vodka."

If my memory serves .... "water" in Russian is voda with emphasis on the second syllable, while "vodka" is vodka.

"water" in Russian is voda with emphasis on the second
syllable, while "vodka" is vodka.
__________________________________

Oh, thank goodness! It was just funny tasting water I was drinking!