Great meta-typos

From the Jerusalem Report:

In fact, they’re not even aware of the word “aware”!

What’s up with that? I see pages VERY VERY often, on a great variety of web sites, where there’s a sentence with a word obviously missing (and often, it’s clear from the context what the word should be). It seems like the kind of error that a human typist would not make as often as I see it. I’ve even wondered if it’s a web browser bug or something in rendering the HTML.

It’s an error that can’t easily be picked up automatically, and is surprisingly easy to read past in your own copy.

I accidentally this all the time.

Back in college, I had a temp job with a company that scanned and digitized legal documents. My job was to compare the digitized versions with the originals and correct all the places where the OCR machine had gotten it wrong. It would have been boring, except they were documents related to a malpractice lawsuit involving an inflatable penile prosthesis.

One of the lawyers involved in the case was named Mr. Shaller. During a lengthy, technical discussion of penis size, the OCR machine consistently rendered his name as “Mr. Smaller” :smiley:

Typo isn’t quite the word, but the following, from a British local newspaper in 1979, is a magnificent testament to the importance of careful typesetting. It purports to be a story about a local committee founded to help organise celebrations of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in Lincolnshire, but something has gone badly awry:

That is the funniest thing I have read in ages. I am choking from the convulsive spasms of laughter. I can’t explain why exactly.

I also started laughing when it abruptly changed stories halfway through.

I laughed hardest at

Sounds like ol’ Frank is having a stroke there.

I have to say
“Tremorremony at the library”
sounds like a hell of a lot more interesting time then I ever had there.

I liked this one. This company paid a lot of money to be on the inside back cover of a local legal directory. Their ad: “When it has to right the first time!” (This was in RED, by the way.)

Not really a very effective ad IMO.

OMG I’m dying here :smiley:

Me too. There is something indescribably hilarious about that kind of thing.

I once messed up a job interview because of something similar, back when I was a high school student looking for a summer job. While I was waiting for the interview to begin, I was leafing through The New Yorker, which featured reprints of small, hilarious typos from various sources.

I happened to read one that had me in hysterics (like the example above, it morphed midway into a something completely different, in this case in the middle of a quotation, so the person being quoted sounded like a total lunatic). Just as I started gasping with laughter, I got called in for the interview. I tried to explain to the interviewer why I was practically choking uncontrollably.

He didn’t seem real impressed, and I didn’t get the job.

Perhaps it’s especially funny in the context of a quaint little English town circa 1979, all brown suits and little ladies at the library and victory gardens. Monty Python was great at inserting humour into that particular milieu – as was Ian Anderson, in his wonderful liner notes (a fake small-town English newspaper) for the Jethro Tull album Thick as a Brick.

Not a big typo, but I’m guessing that this classic had a big effect on the poor kid’s life, finding copies of the photo on his desk, in his locker, stuck on his back, etc. I’m guessing these jokes lasted for a while.

I’m not so sure – that kid is badass. Skilled hunter, AND his name is Cannon!

I assume they specialized in maritime litigation?

I’ve changed my mind, this is now my favorite part, thinking about someone being quoted as actually saying that cracks me up. Although the abrupt shift into “managing to stroke the ball home” is still pretty funny.

Damn! Those antlers must have hurt.

The picture in the article actually did remind me of the Thick as a Brick cover.