A Typo a Day
Portland, OR
Today Josh and I made a special effort at doing Portland, not only because it’s a cool city but also due to today being Josh’s birthday. Yes, Josh had the privilege of spending this particular anniversary of the day he was brought into the world with a sluggish, unshorn typo-hunter. Fortunately, Portland stepped up and provided a suitable dose of joy for my friend, beginning with an excellent breakfast at a place called Jam on Hawthorne. We had exquisite pancakes and French toast and eggs, and the waitress was quite cordial. I did notice a typo on the great board that o’erhung the dining area.
Ah, the perpetually troublesome nature of double-consonant words! I thought there’d be no harm in alerting the waitress to the error. She nodded, her expression carefully blank, and professed to despising typos herself, but would not correct this one on the spot or let me do so, as it would require fetching a ladder. I gave her a TEAL card. I hope that the typo was fixed, though Josh had his doubts that such an ephemeral piece of text as today’s soup listing would be revised. At least I can take comfort from the fact that the word must now be gone altogether, replaced by minestrone or somesuch. Still, I have a secret fear that typos not properly slain will someday rise from their plots, with a terrible hunger that cannot be slaked.
After breakfast, we stopped by a local produce market across the street. Josh thought it’d be a good idea to pick up some citrus providers to stave off scurvy for yet another day. I wandered among the apples, and lo, my scouring of the area proved fruitful:
I brought the typo to the attention of the woman running the place, and she thought it was funny. She allowed me to fix the mistake (which was on both sides of the sign), having seen the wide variety of tools at my disposal in the Typo Correction Kit, which I carry everywhere with me, even to subcommittee meetings and cricket matches. First, however, she asked, a bit plaintively, “It won’t look obvious, will it?”
Non, madame. I gave you my word that I would apply the utmost care to the correction. It’s only when I am forced to be furtive that sloppiness results.
All right, as it turned out, some furtiveness resulted in that market after all. In the midst of wiping out that errant a, I noticed a typo on another sign:
She had been so kind. I would hate to make a real nuisance of myself. Mightn’t I just correct this one too while I’m at it, and while Josh is so conveniently distracting the woman with heartfelt questions about leeks?
Delicious.
Josh and I headed into the popular Pearl District of Portland, where I wanted to check out the legendary Powell’s, also known as the City of Books. That was one metropolis I would not mind living in, not at all. I headed for my usual haunt, the fantasy and sci-fi section, because (as if this has not already been established through the nature of TEAL’s quest) I am a monstrous geek. And, oh, the testimonials and the cross-references! The outlining of authors’ corpora! I had stepped into a sympathetic universe, and I was loath to leave. I did do my part to keep that section pristine, for I noticed a small but impassable typo on one dangling label:
I know that I would hate to have a piece of paper below my works spotlighting me as, say, Jeff Dec, so I took the liberty of adding in the extra letter. Only later did I realize that there was another mistake in the sign. I’m sure you can spot it.
On a landing near the elevators, they had Powell’s swag for sale. One t-shirt design I liked above all the others, but I had a problem with it. Why, when all the other designs were correct, did this one refuse to include an apostrophe?
I’m sure this was not a typo so much as a choice made by some green-haired designer who isn’t afraid to break the rules. Still, I asked the nearest Powell’s employee about it. Why did he think the apostrophe had been left out?
He just stared at me, then said in a somewhat dull tone, “I couldn’t tell you.”
Come on, I thought, I call for speculation, my good man. “Could the apostrophe have migrated, somehow? Do you think it’s behind that raincloud?”
He laughed at this and offered some jocular response, but he was also making a conscious effort to get into the elevator and put a metal door between us. I resigned myself to getting that t-shirt and perhaps marking it after the first wash. Before I left that area, though, I found something in true need of correction:
I found a clerk and reported it to her, and with much sympathetic clucking over the mistake, she phoned those who could be responsible for fixing the sign. Then she reported to me that it’d be taken care of very soon. I feel that there’s a seventy-percent chance that this will actually occur. Powell’s surely does not trade in empty promises.
We passed a sign with items rendered in chalk. It was not a good day for things written in that dusty medium.
We walked around for a while longer, chatting with a garrulous old man at the visitors’ center and then stopping in for free cupcakes at a place run by Julie’s friend. Then we headed up a hill in a sky tram to get a better view of the city. Since the day was clouded over and we couldn’t see Mt. Hood, we felt underwhelmed by our detour. But it was still cool riding the tram, a little.
In the early evening, we were scheduled to catch a drink with David, a reader of this humble blog and the author of a forthcoming book on the history of English spelling. We arrived in his neighborhood, but as we were walking to the meeting spot, I noticed a quote by Jonathan Swift in the window of a nearby restaurant, one that did not seem right to me. We figured that it was wrong and corrected it, leaving our card, but I believe now that it was right after all. We consulted some erroneous sources at the time. Our apologies. Fortunately, the correction was not permanent.
Totals
Typos Found: 191
Typos Corrected: 115
April 16th, 2008 at 5:47 am
I’ve been enjoying your blog ever since I learned of it on the local news channel.
I’ve never been a proofreader, other than as a pressman for our high school newspaper, but I’ve been aware of this plague sweeping our nation.
“a apple crisp?”
April 16th, 2008 at 6:27 am
To make a Apple Crisp?
Regards,
An otherwise big fan of your work.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Back here in Hanover, your old stomping grounds, you might be amused to know that the changeable ledge signs above the doors to the Hopkins Center had an irritating typographic glitch that nobody seemed to notice. The font used is Clarendon bold and if you recall the individual letters are about 18 inches tall. When the new director, Jeff James arrived, I wrote him a note about the problem. If you recall, the signs are composed of panels of large moveable letters, commas, periods, apostrophes and often quotation marks. The open quotes had the egregious error… they were made as reversed apostrophes instead of figures resembling sixes. The close quotes were correctly made, resembling nines. I thought it was the time to make it known when the new director was appointed. Jeff was happy to comply. Probably only about five people knew about this significant correction. Until now.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I just read this in my local paper and though I’d pop back to share:
Vandal’s spelling falls flat
April 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Jenn took the post right from me. “A” apple crisp?! Blasphemy!!
April 16th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I ran all the way here (from Google Reader) to point out “a” apple crisp. Oh, Jeff. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Rebecca, darling, you and the other astute readers who caught this additional error are as a lucent beacon illuminating hope for the future.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Ditto, with the “a”. But I’m a late reader, so… no credit for me. However, inspired by what I’ve read of your journey thus far, I fixed a typo in Shreveport, LA last weekend when on a mini-vacation!
April 17th, 2008 at 7:16 am
came this way from alternet, and i must say, i too thought, first and foremost “a apple crisp?”
however, i am also one of those terrible people who uses no caps when typing informally.
in fact, my handwriting is in all-caps, so there you have it - the balance!
best of luck on your quest!
April 17th, 2008 at 7:55 am
“Paninni” is misspelled-
in these ’starbuck days’
you may want to branch out to correct
mishandling of “Fritalian”
April 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hello
‘Panini’ is plural (but spelled correctly). I don’t think you can have half a plural, can you? The singular is ‘panino’. Although, hm, has the word been absorbed into English only in the plural form? So is it, in fact, acceptable use? I’m not going to sleep tonight.
Siobhan
April 17th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Like Siobhan pointed out, panini is spelled correctly: with one ‘n’.
Jeff and co., keep your eyes out for this one. It’s actually one of those sign words that few can manage to use correctly. Even in this particular sign, it is used incorrectly. Panini is plural for sandwich in Italian, yet in America is frequently paired with the word sandwich, or worse, sandwiches. It is the Sahara desert of the deli world.
It is also not a ‘mishandling’ of “Fritalian” because the word is simply Italian, as are all of the terms that Starbucks has borrowed. Some may exist in French, such as demi, but I don’t believe that a savvy corporate model would make the (messy) mistake of using terms from both languages. It doesn’t make sense. Neither does the marketing campaign based on the assumption that people don’t know enough to know what it is they’re drinking or reading. It’s too bad.
Keep up the good work everyone.
April 17th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Did you also correct “A apple crisp” ?
April 17th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Thank’s for looking down your knows at us. Get over yourselve’s an’ Dont come back to Stumptown. Meshugenah!
April 17th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
There is a trucking company that runs trucks past my window on Rt. 7 in Vermont that calls itself Road Scholar. This is obviously the work of a great mind. But, how do you feel about puns? If you came across a great unintended pun how would you approach this? Can something original or maybe even better happen by accident? It happens in nature, so how about in language? I would love to hear your thoughts.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I would like to ask you wonderful writers and spellers to be patient with the rest of us. Yes correct us, but do so kindly! The way Jeff works seems to work nicely!
Jeff, I love how you express the problem in a very kind way. It must be fun to correct errors in a furtive way.
ESL person
April 17th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
This is a hoot! I hope it sinks in with the people who you are correcting!!
I need a non-stop tour at my current consulting joint. It’s a technology company and EVERYONE says “setup” when they mean “set up”. I don’t know if this is a typo so much as standard practice. I’ve been harping on people about it and someone explained — because they are a tech company, they are used to working with “setup files”. Um, OK. Like that explains it???
Looking forward to more!!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I couldn’t even finish reading your blog post, I scrolled right down to add a comment about “a Apple Crisp” and found I’d been thwarted in efforts. So many had already added their comments to let you know. This will be the last time I read a blog post so late after it was added.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
oops: in “my” efforts
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:57 am
Jen - I did the same thing!
April 25th, 2008 at 10:30 am
“Why must we be continually confronted with prevarication when a simple brushoff would do?”
LOL!
(However, I’m not really sure the woman behind the counter prevaricated. I think she may have “lied”.)
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Jeff,
No worries about “a apple crisp”–Uncle Paul’s is just down the street from me. I’ve got it covered.
This blog is awesome, by the way. I’m so glad I’m not the only one out there fixing these things.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Marianna, take a picture when you do that one! Thanks for checking in.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I live in Oregon and have long wondered about the Powell’s apostrophe; after all, it could be Powells’. Instead, it doesn’t tend to exist.
I liked that you added an apostrophe without asking permission because it was so easy. I only found out about this site and the contest today, so I don’t have a before picture (sigh). But I peeled an apostrophe off of a sign (plastic lettering on glass) while I was waiting for an appointment. I felt nervous about it, since the spacing was a bit off then (didn’t trust myself to move the ’s’!). It’s still “fixed,” and I suspect the owner has not noticed.
June 8th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Jeff and Benjamin,
You’re going to love this one. The Oregonian’s Margie Boulé published an account of your travels through Portland. In anecdotal support of your cause, she (likely, her copy editors) spelled Chicago’s Milwaukee (or Milwuakee) Furniture as Milwaukie (and, Milwuakie). Twice. As you may have noticed, there is a Portland suburb with that spelling. I had to chuckle.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living/1212625515181500.xml&coll=7&thispage=1
I had figured that others would bring this to her attention and that the newspaper would publish a correction at their online property, OregonLive. Nope.
Nice job with TEAL, gentlemen. Keep up the important work.
Kindly,
Eric Hillerns
June 8th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Somerville is also spelled wrong in the article, Eric. What’s funny about the Milwaukee thing is that she even checked the spelling with me during the interview. It must have been copy editors, as you say, making it wrong.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
It’s the little things, like facts, that are such a bother. (Insert winking emoticon here.)
June 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I love the idea of TEAL!! I read about it in The Oregonian and was able to identify immediately. I am always on the lookout for typos and fix them whenever I can. Handouts, newspapers, papers from school (yeah, they’re in there) are no match for my mighty correction pen. A mistake I see a lot is when people put the comma outside of quotation marks. It just looks so lonely and awkward there. As in, “You guys are the best”,……
But seriously, I think what you’re doing is great. Keep it up!!
August 7th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
mini credit card readers insertA Typo a Day