# What could cause these typos? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 4, 2023, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601 "2023-11-04T20:35:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/1 "2023-11-04T20:35:36Z")
In preparation for the upcoming election on Tuesday, I’ve been reading several articles on [cleveland.com](http://cleveland.com) (the website for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the area’s main newspaper). In all of the articles, I’ve been noticing the same two peculiar misspellings: First, every instance of the lower-case letter x is replaced with an opening-double-quote character. Second, every instance of the lower-case letter y is simply omitted entirely. So you get things like “It’s time for the ne"t step for William Yeung, who is now running for maor” What could possibly cause these typos? My first thought was OCR errors, in something scanned in, but these are current news articles. Surely, nothing modern is scanned and OCRed; it’s just typed directly into a computer. And OCR errors are seldom that consistent, either. Some issue with text encoding, maybe? Or with font representation? But I wouldn’t expect either of those to happen with characters as basic as English-language letters. Or maybe it’s something with my browser? Is this showing up for anyone else? A sample story (though the same two issues seemed to consistently show up in every story I read): > **[Lakewood voters to decide Board of Education race](https://www.cleveland.com/community/2023/10/lakewood-voters-to-decide-board-of-education-race.html)** > > Residents on election day will be electing the next Lakewood City Schools Board of Education. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/2 "2023-11-04T20:45:28Z")
Seems to be something on your end; the letters X and Y show up fine for me throughout the article. Exactly what it would be, I have no idea… ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/3 "2023-11-04T20:47:53Z")
The current version of your sample article contains neither of those anomalies that I could find. I’m on Win10 & Edge. The keyboard I’m typing on has a defective “o” key and although I strike it, it often doesn’t register. e.g. I just had to go back and put the “o” into “keybard”. Perhaps whoever typed your offending articles has a bad “y” key & they don’t spell check very well. Lowercase x in UTF-8 or ASCII is hex 78 (U+0078) while straight double-quote is hex 22 (U+0022) and opening double-quote is U+201C. I’m not seeing any kind of single-bit error or encoding glitch that should be able to make one into the other. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/4 "2023-11-04T21:03:02Z")
What are you using (browser and OS) to read the articles? I sometimes have issues with my Win10/Chrome reading something written by an Apple device. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/5 "2023-11-04T21:03:29Z")
No problems here. Windows 10 and Chrome. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/6 "2023-11-04T21:04:53Z")
Yes, looks fine to me. When I copy and paste a chunk of the body text into Word, it tells me the font is Palatino Linotype. Try opening Word or Wordpad on your PC and typing a sentence or 5 in that font. See if it replicates the error. If so, your font file is messed up. (Assuming I’m following this correctly) If so, you can probably delete it from the windows font folder and replace with a copy from another windows machine. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/7 "2023-11-04T21:26:17Z")
Hm, definitely something on my end… When I copy and paste text from it, or select and right-click, it registers correctly. > [@md-2000](#): > > When I copy and paste a chunk of the body text into Word, it tells me the font is Palatino Linotype. When I do the same, it pastes as “Times”, and includes the correct characters. I’m using Firefox on a Mac, by the way. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/8 "2023-11-04T21:50:48Z")
Does it persist after rebooting your computer? ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/9 "2023-11-04T22:21:51Z")
You could also try reinstalling firefox. (it’s fine on my Window’s 11 firefox) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2023, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/10 "2023-11-04T22:32:41Z")
I know exactly zero about fonts on a modern Mac. It might be interesting to copy/paste a paragraph containing examples of the goofed up text into whatever word processor you use and see what font it thinks the good and bad characters are. If there is a way to install a fresh copy of those font(s) on your machine you’ll probably have miraculous healing. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/11 "2023-11-05T00:26:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m using Firefox on a Mac, by the way. Firefox and Mac here. Looks fine. Ventura 13.5.2 and Firefox 119.0 ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/12 "2023-11-05T00:33:00Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > Does it persist after rebooting your computer? > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > You could also try reinstalling firefox. > [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Firefox and Mac here. Looks fine. Very weird. It’s starting to look like the next step would be to take a nap and see if it still looks that way when you wake up… ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/13 "2023-11-05T01:07:45Z")
In displays and Word etc., if you paste something and the font is not found, AFAIK it will find and use the nearest matching font (serif, bold or not, size, etc.) I’m not current on web tech, and especially Mac (my newest Mac is 10 years old) so I can’t say if the possibilty is that (a) it’s downloading the font along with the web page (and we don’t see the error, so the font itself is fine) (b) and possibly there was a glitch when it downloaded and the font is persistent in your browser cache. The fact that this particular website (and as far as we can tell, onnly this site) is doing this on only your computer suggests to me that might(!) be an issue. A lot of newspapers like to maintain a consistent “look” by using specific “custom” fonts. The way to check this, is to clear your browser cache. However, I hate doing this if it risks erasing cookies, since then all your things like saved login preferences get deleted. But if you’re brave, and careful what you agree to delete when clearing browsing history… that might do it. Another suggestion is to start Firefox in Troubleshoot mode - see if it’s the same… # How to start Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode Click the menu button click Help, select Troubleshoot Mode… and click Restart in the _Restart Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode?_ dialog. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/14 "2023-11-05T01:11:06Z")
If you (any you) are using a browser that doesn’t support clearing cached data and cookies on a site-by-site basis, it might be useful to consider upgrading to one from the last decade or so. Progress is a real thing. But yeah. Your overall point is spot on. Something is wrong with the cached data or fonts associated with that one website on that one computer. Forcing a refresh of that is the most likely cure. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/15 "2023-11-05T01:58:03Z")
Well, going for the low-hanging fruit, opening the page in private browsing mode didn’t change anything. At this point, though, I think my next step is the one @Riemann suggested: > [@Riemann](#): > > It’s starting to look like the next step would be to take a nap and see if it still looks that way when you wake up… ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2023, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-cause-these-typos/992601/16 "2023-11-05T01:58:55Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > It’s starting to look like the next step would be to take a nap and see if it still looks that way when you wake up… Rip van Winkle was onto something, for sure…