I had to look that up. I see the part was sung by a “bargain counter tenor.” Is that just a tenor singing in false?
Heh. My parents grew up in Penna and didn’t like their families all that much, but out of duty and for us grandkids, we would go visit maybe once a year (we lived in NYS). Those plates came out and my father’s reaction was, “with a friend like Pennsylvania, who needs enemies?”
Not in print, but an acquaintance of my Mom’s referred to the “Twelve Commandments”. 
Reminds me of Mel Brooks and “I bring you these Fifteen–” <crash>“–these Ten Commandments…”
H2 seems to be a fertile ground for such slip-ups. Today I heard that “No dinosaur skeletons are found below the KT boundary.” Huh? 
Sorry to take so long but I googled and apparently Metro has a Truth Facts humour column.
A gag from Oglaf.com:
I was sentenced to ten lasses. Best. typo. ever.
Just found this recently, from A Short History of the American Diet, by Nelson Algren:
“There was fresh corn so recent from the mill that it had not yet become infested with weasels.”
Weevils would be bad enough…
My sweetie and I were listening to a (pretty terrible) audiobook during a long boring drive once (I5, SF to LA, in case you’re wondering). One of the characters had a mule… except at one point, it was described as a camel. It was as though the author had done a “find and replace” when he changed his mind as to the species, but this one camel had slipped through the cracks.
That was by no means the worst part of this book, though. Sadly I can’t recall the title, so cannot warn readers away from it, but if you ever come across a mule that turns briefly into a camel, you’ll have found it!
A countertenor is a very high male voice singing approximately in the range of an alto. Popular in baroque opera (since castrati are illegal now) and some modern stuff.
A bargain counter tenor is a joke; common in the works of PDQ Bach (Peter Schickele).
I see a lot of these; I watch some of the dross churned out by the History and Military Channels, and I get the free Washington Post Express rag they hand out at Metro stops. The Express clearly doesn’t believe in proofreading. Probably their silliest was a giant headline when the planet’s human population topped 7 billion:
“699,999,999…and one!”
Well, if you add one to 699,999,999, you get 700 million, not 7 billion. I hate math and try not to think about it, and that one still leaped out at me.
Sometimes it’s a matter of opinion: a history show asserting that El Alamein was the “greatest” battle of World War II; or parochialism, an American program reporting that the Battle of the Bulge resulted in more deaths than any other battle in the war.
A rich source of misunderstanding is the program summaries displayed when searching my Verizon TV schedule – they were not written by the shows’ creators, as I understand it. Some gems:
Emperor Julius Caesar
The Crusades Begin when Knights from America Invade the Middle East
At Midway, American Torpedo Planes Sank Four Japanese Carriers
…and a personal favorite: a program on dinosaurs that showed “artist’s conception” CGI-type images of the meteor that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. At the moment of impact, one can see silhouetted against the flames of destruction a pair of wide-eyed Titanotheres – no doubt surprised to find themselves transported 15 or more million years backward in time, never mind the meteor’s impact itself.
A rraa g f y
Not exactly an editing mistake; more like one by the author (though a really good editor might have caught it): In his biography of Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw translates “Operation Panzerfaust” (the German takeover of Hungary) as “Operation Bazooka.”
While the Germans had an antitank weapon by the same name, Panzerfaust actually means “armored fist.”
(And no, it does not mean “tank fist,” another History Channel abomination. “Tank fist” is a bad translation by someone who doesn’t know German. The primary meaning of Panzer is “armor.”)
Like Mezzanine Soprano and Off-Coloratura.
And Basso blotto. (You’ve heard people say that someone’s hair-color comes out of a bottle, but a singer’s voice?)
I don’t have a better reference than you, Thudlow Boink. Thanks for posting that.
To answer terentii, i was a kid at the time, and I was not (and still am not) an expert in the English language. I just remember when they changed the plate back to “Keystone State”, the story was that the new governor at the time hated it because it was grammatically incorrect.
I guess I always assumed that since they changed the plate and no one stood up for “you’ve got” as being AOK, he was on to something.
I vaguely remember my english teacher confirming this, so it kind of solidified the idea in my head. The “got” was redundant and unnecessary, and that was the end of it for me.
But, if you want to use “you’ve got”, knock yourself out. I am going to go with my English teacher and the gov.
This actually brings up a question… Is there one defacto standard for the English language that would define every rule, that could be consulted to answer this “officially”?
Read a book called, IIRC, The Mystery of the Fallen Treasure, in which three kids enter a diner to question a suspect while one sister walks their dog outside. But the author has her ask the suspect a question. And she didn’t come in, because two paragraphs later she and the dog finally enter the diner.
I think my favorite typos are as follows:
-
The main character’s father in a romance novella was a professor at the prestigious ivy league Dartmouth college in Vermont
-
In the middle of Need by Carrie Jones, the protagonist suddenly hears a sucking nose. There is no elephant in that story.
-
But my most favorite of all was a sign on a university bus that said this
My Big Three from television include:
A character on 21 Jump Street saying “I grew up in mun-au-chee” New Jersey. If you grew up there (or had someone call their borough hall), you’d know it’s pronounced MOON-au-kee.
Bernie Mac on a phone call from his sister: “Area code 201? What’s she doing in Atlantic City?” 201 is northern New Jersey. Atlantic City is in area code 609.
Dr. Spencer Reid on the origins of Halloween: *It’s based on the ancient Celtic holiday of Sam-hain." You’re a genius with computer access. Google it and find out it’s pronounced SOW-een, dumbass.
In 1946 Des Moines got a miniature amusement park called Kiddieland, with a 300’ frontage along Fleur Drive south of downtown. The Des Moines Register somehow got crosswise of this and described the size of the park as “300 square feet.” Kiddieland could have fit in a large living room.
Speaking of typos, that happened in 1950. 1946 was a little early to be catering to the first wave of the baby boom unless you ran a diaper delivery.
The August, 2015 issue of Washingtonian magazine has an article about ballet, and spells the word “tendu” as “tondue”.
I’m reading a book called The Sports Day Mysteries, by David A. Adler. There are two teachers at the same school, Mr. Day and Mr. Dane. The author’s already had Mr. Day talk to “Mr. Day”, obviously meaning the latter. He’s not talking to himself.
I was reading a novel based on the glass-blowing monopoly on the island of Morano in Italy. The great grandparent of the protagonist used his hands to form the glass. There were even references to his having no fingerprints due to the heat of the process. This annoyed me no end - I almost put the book down, but the story interested me enough to overlook such a stupid concept. There is no possibility that you can work glass with your bare hands: water boils at 212 degs F and bone burns at 1700 F.