Today I learned about an Anne McCaffrey collection that was supposed to be titled Get of the Unicorn (meaning “offspring of the unicorn”) but there was a typo in the contract that read Get Off the Unicorn. They decided to use the typo as the title. Any other examples of something like this happening? Any where the change of a single letter so completely changed the meaning of the title?
Something like that happened to me. I put together an anthology of mystery parodies and titled it The Defective Detectives. The publisher made it singular: The Defective Detective. I thought that changed potential reader expectations of the book completely.
Inglorious Basterds, possibly? There have been various explanations for why “Bastards” is spelled wrong but one of theory is simply that Tarantino is a bad speller and the typo stuck.
For years, AC/DC’s Back in Black listed track 4 as “Given The Dog A Bone”. I think it was first corrected to “Givin” on the 2003 CD reissue.
“One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”
William Faulkner’s name was a typo.
Jethro Tull’s first single was released by “Jethro Toe,” but they ignored the mistake and reverted to their true name for subsequent releases, so this doesn’t fit the OP.
Is it still considered likely that Nome, Alaska originated as a typo? (A handwritten mark on a map — “Name?”).
Hiram Ulysses Grant became Ulysses S. Grant
Harry S. Truman
Elliot S! Maggin
The iron in spinach thing. Irony at it’s best.
Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.
Dwyane Wade. Though not really a typo; depending on where you get your story, either his mother was a heroin addict and, well, messed it up when writing down the name to put on the birth certificate, or his grandmother named him and that’s how she thought it was spelled.
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[del]Orpah[/del] Oprah Winfrey? Although according to her Wikipedia page it was more of a mispronunciation that stuck than a misspelling.
Lands’ End.
The company was supposed to be Land’s End, but someone made the typo in the logo that wasn’t discovered until the promotional material was printed. They didn’t have the money to redo it, so they changed the company name.
The RS-71 became the SR-71.
“Lite”. Started with beer. Now you see it everywhere.
I think you forgot Inglourious.
Years ago, there was a Kentucky Derby hopeful named Plugged Nickle; the horse ended up being named the top sprint house of 1980.
In the book “Ivanhoe”, Walter Scott named one of the Saxon characters Cedric. “Cedric” isn’t a Saxon name, but “Cerdic” is (or was). Of course, nowadays Cedric seems like a perfectly cromulent name, but it started off as a misspelling.
Something about Buttle rings a bell
Is this true? I’ve read this story before, but I seem to recall that it was willfully changed to SR-71, and not just “a typo” or “slip of the tongue.”
That one also, so far as I can tell, is a myth.