Back in the dark ages, when men were men and women were typists, the word ‘typo’ was invented. The word still has some application today, but today’s software allows another whole class of errors. Cut and paste but off by one word, for example. Highlight all but one letter of a word and then type in the replacement. My personal favorite: cut some text out of one paragraph and paste it into another, not noticing that the two paragraphs have different tenses. Even if you use Word with spelling and grammer turned on, a lot of these get by (well, to be honest, when I use Word, about half the text is underlined in green. Microsoft has no sense of humour). The situation gets even worse when you’re posting here - even though I write the message in notepad or Word, I invariably do some final editing once it’s been pasted into the text box. Where you can see about ten lines and you can easily lose track of the context around your edit.
I’d like a new word to describe this kind of error - I heard a guy many years ago who was proposing ‘worpo’ (after word processer) but this never seemed right. Lately, I’ve been thinking ‘grammo’. Any suggestions?
“Typo” is an abbreviated form of “typographical error,” and since the discipline remains typography even if done on a computer, “typo” is still appropriate.
It’s true, though, that the advent of the WYSISYG word processor has empowered people to create typo types never before possible.
My personal favorite is the typo that gets by the word processor. The kind where if they just red it once they’d notice it. It’s created by the people that just blindly accept whatever changes Word offers.
I like the word typo, but it does suffer the same problems these days as "printer’. "Type’ comes from greek for ‘a blow’-- hence its use with true ‘printed’ text, in which a physical impact is neccessary; "print’ as well implies a sort of ‘impression’ (linguistically related) or blow, so should we come up with a different term for ink jet and laser ‘printers’?
M.K. - thanks, finally someone who understands where I’m coming from. Chef Troy, I know what the derivation of ‘Typo’ is, but thanks for including that in the dicussion, it’ll help. In my mind ‘Typographical error’ brings back memories of high school print shop, where we were dealing with actual movable type - a typo in that class involved putting the wrong piece of type in the sentence. Did I mention that I’m really old? My apologies and consider that one dealt with. Point is, the process of assembling movable type is about as relevant to posting a message here as … well, just work with me here, okay?
Now, move on to ‘Printers’. Great, as if I didn’t have enough to obsess about already. Excellent observation, now I’m going to have to give this one some thought, too. And, BTW, thanks a freaking lot; this leads right into: why do we ‘dial’ a phone?
I just LOVE “cybo.” That one is descriptive and easy enough to say that it might just stick if we all start using it.
Tomndebb, I know you meant well correcting my use of WYSISYG to WYSIWYG, but I was referring to that other acronym, “what you see is sexy young girls.” That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
In fact that could account for a lot of typos. If I’m looking at nubility instead of the screen, all sorts of mistakes start to creep in. grin
