For the Love of Typos
I have always taken great joy in spotting typographical, grammatical, spelling, and syntactical errors that create new meanings. As a professor I've been collecting them for years. Student papers are loaded with 'em. One of my favorites came from a paper discussing that segment of the public that consumes the greatest amounts of electronic media. The student wrote, "Meanwhile, the consumptive public just stays inside watching TV all day."
Well, I suppose they'd have to, with the quarantine and all.
Today I got a craving for misprints and revisited one of my favorite shrine-to-the-typo sites, The Anti-FAQs. Its purpose is to showcase eBay misprints. There are plenty of pictures of reflective objects revealing the nudity of their photographers, countless entries spelling bowl "bowel" and public "pubic," and other assorted errors that amaze and delight: pewter spelled "puter," plaque spelled "plague," tempera (the paint) spelled "tempura," hatful spelled "hateful," and so on.
But my all-time favorite, the one that brings tears to my eyes every time, is the following reference to an auction for a big tub of frosting-like doughnut dip:
"That is right, 24 lbs of pure heaven. This is a bucket of the sweet goodness in which they dip dognuts."
Do yourself a favor and visit the site now.
Well, I suppose they'd have to, with the quarantine and all.
Today I got a craving for misprints and revisited one of my favorite shrine-to-the-typo sites, The Anti-FAQs. Its purpose is to showcase eBay misprints. There are plenty of pictures of reflective objects revealing the nudity of their photographers, countless entries spelling bowl "bowel" and public "pubic," and other assorted errors that amaze and delight: pewter spelled "puter," plaque spelled "plague," tempera (the paint) spelled "tempura," hatful spelled "hateful," and so on.
But my all-time favorite, the one that brings tears to my eyes every time, is the following reference to an auction for a big tub of frosting-like doughnut dip:
"That is right, 24 lbs of pure heaven. This is a bucket of the sweet goodness in which they dip dognuts."
Do yourself a favor and visit the site now.
posted by WinterWheat | 1:11 PM
4 Comments:
i love it!! one half of the world watches TV whilst coughing their lungs up and the other half (presumably the ones who are able to get out more) are dipping dog bits into a bucket of sweet goo
LOL!!!!!!!!
Love it!
Wish you were here over my shoulder to correct all of mine. Being a faster thinker than I am a writer (maybe it has to do with being left handed), my posts and comments are filled with typos and spelling errors. I am, however, being extra careful with this post.
Hope you are feeling well, dear.
Hon, don't feel bad. If I don't remember to go over my posts/emails/whatnot I discover afterward that I've peppered them with typos. For me the most common ones are my fingers' automatic substitutions of one word (that I tend to type more frequently and therefore is more automatic) for another, like "their" for "there." These are terribly embarrassing mistakes because they suggest to the reader that I don't know the difference between "their" and "there." But I do, I swear, I DO!
The tendency to load up your writing with typos does have something to do with being left-handed, IMO. Did you know that dyslexia is more common among lefties? As you know, I worship lefties and their creative, innovative minds, so I tend to find their typos endearing, especially if they've made me laugh.
BTW, one of your all-time classics: Po Pod for Pol Pot. Had me smiling for an hour after. :-)
I am the queen of typos, everytime I write add I have to check because nine times out of ten I've typed out ass!
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