I get in a zone at work, typing furiously, feeling smug as the words appear at the speed of light. Today, I was working on a semi-official document being sent to nurses, many of whom are highly educated (sarcasm hat is on). When I finished up my project and hit spell check, imagine my surprise when this word appeared - Hepatits. Hmmm, for a split second I considered leaving it that way, just for my own personal amusement. Nobody else would notice, right? But (adult hat on) I changed it to its correct spelling and moved on to more mundane tasks. So what’s the biggest goof you ever caught through spell check?
[hijack]
Sorry…but I gotta…
Run this through your spell checker…
"I have a spelling checker
I disk covered four my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Eye ran this poem threw it.
Your sure real glad two no.
Its very polished in its weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
A checker is a blessing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The checker pours o’er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.
Bee fore wee rote with checkers,
Hour spelling was inn deck line,
Butt now when wee dew have a laps,
Wee are not maid too wine.
And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
There are know faults in awl this peace,
Of nun eye am a wear.
To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud,
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.
That’s why eye brake in two averse
Cuz Eye dew sew want too please.
Sow glad eye yam that aye did bye
This soft wear four pea seas."
[/hijack]
I have two stories of typographical disaster - one averted, one not.
Both happened when I was managing a résumé shop, with one other writer on staff. Our policy was for the author of a résumé to proof his own work, then hand it to the other one of us for a second look. Then the client proofread it one more time when they came back to pick it up. The triple-redundancy caught 99 percent of the errors. But there’s always that remaining one percent…
First, the one that we DIDN’T catch. My assistant wrote a résumé for a manufacturing supervisor - a factory-floor kind of job. He was looking to trade his blue collar for a white one and hired us to do him up a slick résumé.
One line in the description of his current job was supposed to read, <i>“Responsible for all shift work.”</i>
I’m sure you can spot where the typo goes.
Well, spell check missed it - after all, “shit” is a real word, and it’s in the spellcheck dictionary. John missed it when he proofed the résumé, because it’s easy to miss one when you know what it’s supposed to say. I missed it too, because… well, there’s really no good explanation for why I missed it. The CLIENT missed it too - probably because he trusted us and didn’t do a careful proofing job.
The first person who saw it was someone who was interviewing this poor guy for a job. Needless to say, the tone of the interview went downhill from there. He came back FURIOUS. Of course he couldn’t have sued us, because the release he signed protected us from liability, but of course we ignored that and reprinted his résumé for him, apologizing profusely. After he calmed down a bit, he said, “You know, boys, it’s true as written… but let’s find a nicer way to put it.”
The other one happened when I was between assistants and working the shop by myself. A really hot-looking woman came in looking to have a résumé done so she could go after a customer-service job at a telecom company. The job experience she gave me, though, was all waitress-in-a-bar type stuff. We had a two-day turnaround; I was trying to figure out how to characterize this woman’s work history to make it applicable to the customer-service job she was trying to get, and it occurred to me that all of her jobs required extensive contact with the public, so I put on a summary that said: “5+ years of public-contact experience.”
Again, I’m sure you can spot where the typo goes.
But wait… it gets better. In between the time I took down her information and the time she came back to pick up her résumé, she called me and said, “I don’t want you to change anything on the work history I gave you, but I thought you should know that it’s all bogus. I’m actually a topless dancer.” I warned her about the risks involved with handing out misinformation on her résumé, but I had to admit she had a point - the telecom company would never have hired her anyway if she’d put her real work history on there, so she had nothing to lose.
So her appointment to proof her materials comes. I still haven’t noticed the typo. I know she’s really a stripper; she knows that I know. She looks over her résumé and starts to laugh. I asked what was so funny, and she looked me straight in the eye and said, “HONey, you ain’t never been in a titty bar, have you?”
I allowed as how she was pretty close to the truth there, and asked how she knew. She pointed out the typo and said, “It’s against state law - there ain’t no pubic contact allowed.”
Ooh, I forgot a more recent one. I work with a very talented graphic artist at the trade association where I - well, “work” doesn’t really describe it, what I mostly do is screw around.
Anyway, she’s young - just turned 21 - and cute, but very slender and consequently somewhat shortchanged in the breastesses department.
Which made it all the more ironic that, when trying to send an e-mail to her and my (female)boss saying “I know Kxxxxx is busy, but I could use her help if you can spare her.” and typed “busty” instead.
They ribbed me about that for a LONG time. And I almost did it AGAIN a couple of days ago.
Well, back when spell check was done by human beings, I had a secretary that had had a little too much fun in the 60’s. In a scathing letter I wrote to tell a corporation, she changed “optimal” to “optional”. Thankfully, I caught it, but I could have set a bad government polcy (another one?).
The most recent was in 48 point type on the front of a document. I gave out 15 copies on my first meeting with a school committee. One of them leaned over and said, “In the next version of this document, why don’t you call us a PUBLIC school?”
I will have my secretary proofread all documents.
I will have my secretary proofread all documents.
I will have my secretary proofread all documents.
(only 97 more times to go)
I once wrote a report on the Shell refinery in Pernis (a small town near Rotterdam, NL) and almost followed the suggested spellchecker correction to Penis.
Sounds like Chef learnt touch typing from Dr Freud.