SamPratt.com

Typo Phile: Death and Typos

An article in today’s online edition of The Register-Star about a fatal motorcycle accident is, sadly, replete with typographical errors:

• The deceased’s first name appears as Afred instead of Alfred.
• His street address is given as Dear Haven not Deer Haven.
• Eyewitnesses is oddly rendered as two words.
• And the key word brake appears as break.

Impressively, however, succumbed was spelled correctly...

Readers and the family of the 25-year-old man who died both deserve better; a clean copy of his obituary, from The Poughkeepsie Journal, can be found here.

(Previous installments of this occasional site feature can be reviewed here.)

Typo Phile: Sweet spot

Cairo (NY).

Typo Phile: Uuum

From today’s Columbia Paper feature on the new owners of the Basilica Industria:

Ms. Auf der Maur, a base player who is now on tour with her band in Vienna, recently released a new album, “Ooom.”

Typo Phile: Quailty is job one

Typo Phile #2

Here is a sampling of recent typos spotted by several regular readers of the local press,  since the publication of the first Typo Phile installment:

1. “a comprehensive economic sweet of incentives”
   [suite] Register-Star
   
2. “I’d defiantly do it again”
   [definitely] Register-Star
3. “Lantern, who’s president”
   [whose] Register-Star
4. “[the garden] should not look unkept”
   [unkempt] Register-Star
5. “I was sort of taken back by them” and
   “they’re quite taken back by the DASNY estimates”
   [taken aback] Register-Star

NOTE #1: For this installment, the names of the authors have been omitted to protect both the innocent and the less-than-innocent.

NOTE #2: Both of the misuses of “taken back” above came from statements by Hudson Mayor Richard Scalera; so arguably the reporter might have simply been reflecting the speaker’s mistake, rather than mishearing a correct usage. To be taken back is to reminisce; to be taken aback is to be astonished or appalled.

NOTE #3: Readers are welcome to submit items for future Typo Phile columns via email. Please note that I’m not so much interested in run-of-the-mill typographic slips-of-the-keyboard, which happen to all of us, but rather in actual misuses or abuses of the English language.

Typo Phile: Hudson Affectations

Allen Street, Hudson (NY). Photo: WILLIAM HELLERMAN

Typo Phile: Road sign edition

Reserv_o_i_r Road, Taghkanic (NY) ... You can’t make this stuff up. Photo: Reader-contributed.

Typo Phile: The war on Tara

Spotted in today’s Register-Star interview of the owners of the newly-renovated Blue Stores restaurant in Livingston:

“I want to restore Blue Stores to its terra-like splendor.”

For the record:

• Terra is Latin for the Earth (and also how George W. Bush pronounced “terror”);


• Terror is an asymmetrical form of warfare, or a 1940s comic book character;
  


• Tara was Scarlett O’Hara’s ancestral home in Gone With The Wind.

But frankly, my dears, the Register-Star doesn’t seem to give a damn about typos.

Typo Phile: Radio Edition

The far-right AM radio host Al Roney asked his intern Samantha this morning what she thought of the Tea Party movement, and she channeled Sarah Palin in her reply:

"I think it's a valid movement. I just hope that fractions don't come up in it."

Maybe Sam the Intern was worrying about her upcoming math test at Shenendehowa, rather than the Teabaggers' descent into factionalism.

Sam the Intern also claimed that Congressman Scott Murphy stole a sugar cookie from her at a reception last year after his NY-20 debate with Eric Sundwall.

Scarily, Samantha (an avowed Ron Paulite who is on loan to Roney from the Albany Times-Union) will be hosting Roney's show next week while he's on vacation.

Typo Phile: Signage Edition

 As my friend David Rubel of Chatham likes to say: Home schooling is no schooling.

Typo Phile #1

 
Word salad photo illustration via Wickenden (CC license)

Spotting the typographical errors which riddle the pages of our local media is a favorite pastime of area newspaper readers. While everyone makes typing mistakes (including the author of this blog), the Johnson-owned Hudson Valley Newspapers chain is arguably the richest regional source of such blunders... One often gets the sense that their spellcheck software has its own unique sense of humor.

Here are some of the very best typos spotted locally in recent years:

1. an escarole account might be created
   [escrow] Sesame Campbell, Chatham Courier
2. Doctors Without Boarders
   [Borders] Jamie Larson, Register-Star
3. the council voted 6-5 that a seeker be sent to the state
   [SEQR] Christine D'Agostino, Register-Star
4. Attorney General Andrew Quomo
   [Cuomo] Jamie Larson, Register-Star
5. First Pubic School in New York
   [Public] Editor unknown,* Register-Star
6. challenges to duel residents
   [dual] Jamie Larson and Francesca Olsen, Register-Star
7. nooks and grannies
   [crannies] Author unknown, Daily Mail
   (spotted at Dick May’s Seeing Greene)
8. Army Core of Engineers
   [Corps] Jamie Larson, Register-Star

If you have some old favorite typos—or spot a new example of word salad in the area press—email your nominations by clicking here. And thanks to all who helped assemble this list; you know who you are...

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* NOTE: Register reporter Andrew Amelinckx graciously submitted this item, but noted that while his byline was on the original story, he did not write or copyedit its headline. (Sure hope I typed “Amelinckx” correctly.)