I was recently directed to the Huffington Post, which has collected a very specific set of amusing typos.  It was a small gallery of misspelled tattoos.  Here it is for your perusal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/28/misspelled-tattoos-perman_n_439993.html

Okay, first let's be fair and remind ourselves that tattoo artists are artists first.  Though there are plenty of word-oriented tattoos, the vast majority of their work is in pictures.  Applying permanent ink to someone's body is a job I could never handle, even if I was a passably good artist--and I'm not.  Someone has to live with every mistake you ever make.

That said, what bothers me most about these is that there were two people involved.  One of TEAL's main missions is just to extend some editing awareness, the hope being that if you ask for a second set of eyes to look over something you just wrote, that other glance will help catch most mistakes.  Unfortunately, the tattoo typos are cases where that wasn't enough.  As I picture the scenarios that possibly led to these typos, I can't help but wonder if it was the awkwardness that allowed these typos to slip by.

One typo, for example, is on a guy who had the words "YOUR NEXT" tattooed across his fists, a letter to each finger.  When the artist heard this proposal, might he or she have said, "Uh...shouldn't that be 'you're'?"  Then I wonder if that isn't just asking for trouble.  I mean, if you're getting "your next" OR "you're next" tattooed on your knuckles, you're probably not the friendliest fellow.  And even if the artist had pointed it out, what if the reply was, "But that won't look as cool."  True, nothing looks cooler than the symmetry of 4-letter-words on your knuckles, even if that symmetry is completely thrown off by one of the two, seeming simple, four-letter words being a ridiculous mistake.  (I am, of course, using "ridiculous" in its more technical definition: inspiring or deserving ridicule.)

In other cases, as with "I'm awsome" tattooed across another sorry soul's back, the receiver might not have been able to find out until it was too late.  And what an insult it would have been to ask, "You know how to spell that, right?"  Even so, I would suggest to all who are planning on getting tattoos, especially with words, that you ask, "What would that look like?"  Feel free to pretend you're uncertain about the font.  Because, again, the real tradgedy... AHEM. Sorry.  The real tragedy here isn't even that these are permanent errors (and the tattoo-owners now considered to by TEAL to be "mobile typos"); it's that each of these tattoo typos involved two people who should have been communicating with one another...and somehow didn't quite pull it off.

As promised, I returned to my neighborhood Shaw's supermarket tonight to see if the lady from yesterday had fulfilled her promise to have someone fix the signs.  Alas, mine eyes still met the sight of "papapya" and "papya".  I stationed myself by them for a while.  An employee passed nearby, a skinny kid texting as he walked, but he just didn't seem like the kind of guy who would get things done.  A few minutes later, another employee wandered into produce.  She was on her way to talk to her friend behind the fried food counter.  They chatted for a couple of minutes in some quasi-French tongue, while I stood very close by, waiting for them to finish.  When it became clear that neither of them were going to acknowledge me on their own, I said loudly but politely to the one on my side of the counter, "Excuse me, are you working the produce section?"

She mumbled something, waved her hand at her friend behind the counter, and walked away.  The friend gave me a trapped smile, small and perfunctory.  I gave her a more generous smile of my own and asked her to find the produce manager.  She nodded and walked down toward the deli, then just stood there for a few minutes. She glanced over, hoping that I had gone away, but I was still there.  Finally, she found someone that she could drag over in my direction, a fellow named Nathan wearing a cap.  "You were asking for the produce manager?"

His question was ambiguous in its own way, not indicating whether he was in fact, the produce manager, but I decided to treat him as if he were.  I leaned in and said, "Hi there, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.  Those signs over there have spelled papaya wrong-- they say 'papapya' and 'papya'.  Could you get someone to make new versions?"

He glanced over, said "Huh.  Well, not sure if there's anyone working over there tonight, but we can try to get them fixed..."

"I belong to an organization known as the Typo Eradication Advancement League," I said.  "We're trying to spread our mission of typo eradication.  So would you be able to have someone print out new versions of the signs tonight?"

Nathan's strategy at this point, or so I surmised, was to make me feel assured that it would happen, and thus get me to exit stage right before I could see whether it would actually happen or not.  So he told me that it would definitely happen tonight.  What Nathan did not know was that I had already made this request on Tuesday and Wednesday nights to other people, and would without question return Friday night as well after work to verify his claim.  This time I had shaken my brain into a clearer state and was actually paying attention to name tags.

"Thank you very much, Nathan," I said.  "Have a good night."

Most people don't go looking for typos-- the typos come gunning for them, assailing them from the escarpments of their side vision.  I keep an eye out, but sometimes I just need to buy groceries.  And then, yow!  A guerrilla attack from commandos previously concealed behind fronds of respectability.  Last night, during one of my rare visits to the produce section at my local Shaw's Supermarket, I spotted a fruit foul-up.

Papapya!  That wasn't quite right.  But not far away, there was another, similar sign.  Perhaps they got it right over here.

No... well... no.

What could be done?  I hailed a tall, well-built manager as he passed nearby.  He regarded me with his pleasant titan's gaze, and I asked if the papaya signs could be fixed.  He took a look at "papapya", nodded, and then glanced at the other one.  "Hey, at least this one's right," he said.

"Well," I said, "no, that one's kind of not right either."

The manager assured me that they'd fix the signs and offered his thanks for pointing out the errors.  I did my shopping and then returned to the signs before I checked out.  They were still the same, but I figured they might need some time to print out new versions.  I'd give them time; I'm a reasonable fellow, I like to think.

Today after work, I popped into Shaw's to see if they'd fixed the signs.  Nope-- still the same.  A different employee came by this time, and I said, "Hi there.  Could you fix these signs?  See, papaya is spelled wrong here, and over here too."

She chuckled at the errors and promised to alert someone about them.  I nodded and hung out near the papayas for a few minutes, watching her stroll down the produce section, into the deli section, chat with a guy cutting meat.  Then on to somebody else by the fish.  No, she was just strolling.  She hadn't meant she'd tell someone about it right away.

Looks like I'll be stopping by tomorrow.  The League's justice will come to its fruition here, sooner or later.

Slow news day

How's your local paper been looking lately?  Or the Times, or the Globe or Post?  Seeming somewhat less reliable and more error-ridden as of late?  That's not just your imagination.  It's no secret that newspapers and magazines and other bastions of the print media world are in trouble.  People aren't buying them because they can read news on the internet for free.  The argument against this used to be that reading the official print news articles would give you a more reliable take on events.  Now, though, papers and magazines are gutting their own trustworthiness in a desperate play for survival.

There is ample evidence already that interest groups and others are filling in much of the current content in publications.  Less money coming in has led to fewer reporters, and in the absence of home-field reporting, someone else has to step in to provide the substance for articles.  These shadowy subcontract providers are a troublesome enough phenomenon for the reliability of news, but there's also a much simpler and more obvious cause for print publications becoming less dependable.  Reporters aren't the first ones to get the axe in times of fiscal peril.  Copy editors are.

According to an article from six months ago by the Washington Post ombudsman, the Post's staff of copy editors has been cut by half over the last five years.  That's not going from four people to two-- that's going from 75 people to under 40.  The ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, notes that "Little mistakes take a huge toll on credibility" (just as we in the League have been saying about stores with typos in their storefronts).  Two weeks ago, Alexander did a follow-up piece called "Why you're seeing more copy-editing errors in the Post" that included strident complaints from Post readers.  Here's one:  "If they don't care about basics like grammar and spelling, how much do they care about factual accuracy?"  Those lurking interest groups I mentioned earlier might be doing more substantive damage to the news content, but the average reader is going to take more umbrage at an article confusing "breaks" with "brakes".  Fair or not, you've got to give a good impression on the surface first.

A similar article appeared yesterday in the Miami Herald by its ombudsman.  On Thursday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune announced it would be cutting 27 people from its staff-- 18 of whom were copy editors.  It got so bad last year that the American Society of Copy Editors (ACES) offered a free year of membership to any copy editors who'd recently been laid off.

I wish I had the solution to the dilemma that faces print media.  All I can point to is what doesn't seem like a smart resolution.  Benjamin pulled the following quote from James Poniewozik out of last week's Time (in a metaphor pertaining to Jay Leno's subpar 10 pm show):

In this respect, NBC has a lot in common with print media.  I recently talked with a neighbor annoyed about the number of typos she said she's been seeing in the New York Times.  The editors are probably stretched thin, I said; the Times just went through a big round of layoffs.  That's terrible, she agreed.  Anyway, she said, she was going to drop her subscription.  Why should she pay all that money and get typos?

Of course, losing subscribers is not exactly going to help beef up the Times's copydesk.  But as a consumer, she had a point: Why pay for a product that disappoints her?  So what if the newspaper business model is challenging.  That's not her problem.  Just fix it!

Easier said than done.  If they can't fix it, we'll all be worse off.  Newspapers and magazines, for all their faults, provide an important public service that nobody else is likely to step in and provide.  Last month, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released the results of a study in Baltimore that found that 95% of original news reporting still came from newspapers and other "old media."  (For the full report, look here.)  If they go away, who's going to fill that void?

There's a reason this article is so unusually link-heavy (as opposed to my usual preference for spouting off unsourced conjecture and deranged speculation).  I want the process of my "research" to be transparent here.  I didn't bother to call anyone or dig up any buried facts to support my points; I just looked up articles on the internet, most of which get their information from old-fashioned newspaper reporting.  This is a blog, and I'm lazy.  Now just imagine for a moment that you had to turn to people like me to know what's going on in the world, or even just in your town.  Scary thought, huh?