Welcome to a short history of the typo - and I do hope I spelled that right.
Even as I wrote this earlier today, my news feed led with a story of a real estate agent in Melbourne, who had offered a unit for sale in the ‘thieving suburb of Reservoir.’ They meant ‘thriving’. Well, I think they did …
Typographical errors - typos - can happen anywhere, any time. My first writing job was as a copywriter for a small advertising agency. Warning me to be diligent, a senior graphic artist told me he had once worked on a very expensive, limited edition, full-color coffee-table book about Egypt.
Everyone in the office went through the galleys line by line, he said, to ensure there were no mistakes. There were late nights, there were sore eyes, there was a lot of coffee drunk.
Finally, when the book was published, they all looked proudly at the cover.
There was a beautiful picture of the pyramids and above it, in bold type, it said:
EGPT.
Damn.
But this kind of mistake doesn’t just happen to boutique publishing companies.
In 2010, Penguin Australia published a new cookbook and ended up with egg on their faces - and they didn’t even separate the yolks. When ‘The Pasta Bible’ appeared in bookshops all over Australia, it included a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto that required “salt and freshly ground black people.”
Er, we think they meant pepper. (That, or they needed to add Ku Klux Klams instead of sardines.)
These things happen. The eBook edition of romance writer Susan Andersen’s “Baby, I’m Yours,” has this on page 293.
“He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground.”
It doesn’t seem all that romantic to me, but I don’t want to judge. Or then again it could be she wanted to write: ‘shifted.’
When Karen Harper wrote ‘The Queen’s Governess’, I’m sure she did not intend to introduce dim sum into the Middle Ages. So was it just a dim proofreader?
‘In the weak light of dawn, I tugged on the gown and sleeves I’d discarded like a wonton last night to fall into John’s arms.’
The poor little pudding. Could be there is a proofreader somewhere wonton a new job?
Not all typos are discovered straight away; in 1931. the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defined the word ‘Dord’ as a noun used in physics and chemistry meaning ‘density.’ It wasn’t until eight years later that a scientist queried the etymology of the word.
It was discovered that Austin M. Patterson, Webster’s chemistry editor, had originally written:
“D or d” - noun: abbreviated form of density.
Mild embarrassment is one thing; utter financial meltdown is another. On December 15, 2005 Mizuho Securities made a public offering of job recruitment company J-Com for 610,000 yen per share ($5,041). Or they thought they had. A typo had reduced the price to one yen per share.
Another typo in the same document offered the public 41 times the number of J-Com Co. shares actually in existence.
Unfortunately for Mizuho, Tokyo Stock Exchange rules do not allow companies to say sorry let me read that again. In just twenty four hours, these two typos cost the company $225 million.
A typo can even mean the difference between life or death. In 1985, Bruce Wayne Morris was convicted of robbery and murder in a California court and the sentencing jury was asked to decide between execution or life imprisonment.
In his written instructions to the jury the judge wanted to make it clear that the accused ‘would not have the possibility of making parole’ - but he accidentally left out the word ‘not’.
The jury, now mistakenly thinking that it was a choice between executing Morris or having him roaming the streets again in a few years, sentenced him to death.
It took 10 years and a Federal Appeals Court to sort it out. It cost millions.
coin from pre-Chiie Chile
While we’re on the subject of fiscal embarrassment; in December of 2008, Chile started minting fifty peso coins with the name of their own country misspelled.
Worse, it took ten months for anyone to notice that they were living in Chile - not Chiie.
Not enough Chile made life too hot for mint engraver Pedro Urzua Lizana and his boss Gregorio Iniguez and they lost their jobs.
The coins have since become collector’s items.
So next time you’re in Chiie, look out for one. They’re worth a lot of money, so it could be worth your whiie.
That’s enough about Mammon; what about misquoting God?
In recent years Iran’s ‘Organization of the Holy Qu’ran’ have had to castigate Iranian publishers who outsourced production of the holy book to Chinese printers because they were filled with typographical errors.
But when it comes to sacred error, the 1631 reprint of the King James Bible - better known as ‘the Wicked Bible’ - wrote the book.
Since book printing back then was akin to copying ‘War and Peace’ longhand, mistakes were inevitable. To their credit, royal printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas made just one error, missing out a single word in Exodus 20:14.
Not bad, I hear you say: that means they got 783,137 words exactly right. But Church leaders at the time instead chose to focus on their one tiny little mistake.
Apparently, God didn’t say: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Who knew?
King Charles I took the moral high ground and ordered that the printers be stripped of their business license and fined £300 for their oversight - three hundred quid is roughly equivalent to a lifetime’s wages today.
The King furthered ordered every existing copy of the offending book to be burned; today only eleven of the original ‘Wicked Bibles’ exist.
The moral of this story?
Always, always, check your work carefully to ensure that you have not any words out or made any splling errors.
Oh, and one other thing - check the fine print before you commit adultery.
After countless hours of checking and re-checking, Lake Union are this week publishing my new historical novel, LOVING LIBERTY LEVINE.
“From the author of The Unkillable Kitty O’Kane comes a gripping novel about finding the American Dream—and what it costs.
In 1913, Sarah Levine leaves her small village and sails to New York to start a promising new life with her husband, Micha. But all Sarah really wants is what has come so easily to her sisters—a family of her own. Finally, in her new home, her dream comes true…but at a terrible cost. She names the baby girl Liberty after the great statue in the harbor that she saw when she first came to America.
From struggling to raise Liberty in a Lower East Side tenement to building a fashion empire, the only constants in Sarah’s life are her love for her daughter and the terrible secret that she must keep. Sarah gives Liberty everything she has, but the truth cannot stay hidden forever. As Liberty grows to womanhood and the world prepares to go to war again, Sarah is asked to make one last impossible choice…”
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Thanks for that, for a trivia collector from way back it was gold. Great Post
What a great post!
I must have been an editor in a previous life!
And then there’s the one about going into a T-Shirt shop, but leaving the “r” out. When I saw that, the book had been out for YEARS
Another fun story from a funghi.
Seriously though Colin do you know who has the remaining copies of the wicked bibles? I mean it could be a good to know if all these years we have been thinking how some of our famous people have been so naughty when in fact it is us who have been reading off the wrong page so to speak.
As to proof reading, well I have a little experience in that department. I am not so good on errant grammar but typos and misplaced word stand out as clear to me as an Aussie football at a tennis match.
By the way just wondering if you ever have typos these days? 😎
Well, David, one was auctioned by Bonham’s in London, in November 2015 to a private buyer. It fetched £31,000. Another copy is in the collection of rare books in the New York Public Library and is very rarely made accessible; another is in the Dunham Bible Museum in Houston, Texas. The British Library has one, and another was displayed a few years ago at the Cambridge University Library exhibition. The rest must be in private collections. Perhaps lawyers, planning to take it with them on Judgment Day and claim a place in heaven by pointing a loophole in the law?