HAPPY NATIONAL TYPO DAY! Jon us as we celebrate those typgrpacial erros that we all kno and love! Today we’re celebrating with pal and comedian Pete Musto (midnightgardenersleague.com / Facebook: MidnightGardenersLeague)!! LET’S PARTY!!
Show Notes
History + fun facts about the holiday
- A typo, or typographical error, or misprint, is a mistake made in the typing of printed or electronic material. According to Wikipedia, the term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors, or the flip-flopping of words such as “than” and “then”. Most typos include simple duplication, omission, transposition, or substitution of a small number of characters.
- “Fat-finger syndrome” is a slang term that refers to an unwanted secondary action when typing. When someone’s finger is bigger than the touch zone, there can be inaccuracy in the fine motor movements and accidents occur. This action happens often with touchscreens, particularly when a person hits two adjacent keys on the keyboard in a single keystroke. For example, “buckled” instead of “bucked”
- There may also be “intentional” typos, which are typos that may be used deliberately for humorous purposes. For instance, the British newspaper The Guardian is sometimes referred to as the Grauniad given its reputation for frequent typesetting errors in the era before computer typesetting.
- Intentional typos are in notorious use on the internet. Some, such as “teh”, “pwned”, and “zomg”, have become in-jokes among groups and subcultures
- Then there’s typosquatting, which is a form of cybersquatting which relies on typographical errors made by internet users. A cybersquatter will typically register a likely typo of a frequently-accessed website address in the hope of receiving traffic when internet users mistype that address into a web browser. Deliberately introducing typos into a web page, or into its metadata, can also draw unwitting visitors when they enter these typos into search engines
- Cybersquatting refers to the act of registering, trafficking in, or using an internet domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The squatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
- Once in the typosquatter’s site, a user may be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site.
- Spam emails also sometimes make use of typosquatting URLS to trick users into visiting malicious sites
- There are several reasons why a typosquatter may buy a typo domain:
- In order to try to sell the typo domain back to the brand owner
- To monetize the domain through advertising revenues from direct navigation misspellings of the intended domain
- To redirect the typo-traffic to a competitor
- To redirect the typo-traffic back to the brand itself, but through an affiliate link, thus earning commissions from the brand owner’s affiliate program.
- As a phishing scheme to mimic the brand’s site, while intercepting passwords which the visitor enters unsuspectingly
- To install drive-by malware or revenue generating adware onto the visitors’ devices
- To harvest misaddressed email messages mistakenly sent to the typo domain
- To block malevolent use of the typo domain by others
- To express an opinion that is different from the intended website’s opinion
- Since the emergence of online auctions, misspelled auction searches have quickly become lucrative for people searching for deals. The concept is based on the incidence that, should someone post an auction and misspell its description or title, regular searches for the item won’t find that auction. A search that includes misspelled alterations of the item would find most misspelled auctions. In fact, a series of third-party websites have sprung up allowing people to find these items.
- There have been different ways of marking typos over the course of typography technology
- When using a typewriter without correction tape, typos were commonly overstruck with another character such as a slash. This saved the typist the trouble of retyping the entire page to eliminate the error, but as evidence of the typo remained, it was not aesthetically pleasing.
- In computer forums, sometimes ^H (a visual representation of the ASCII backspace character) was used to “eras” intentional typos: Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman, he’s visiting from corporate HQ.
- In instant messaging, users often send messages in haste and only afterwards notice the typo. It is common practice to correct the typo by sending a subsequent message in which an asterisk precedes the correct word.
- In formal prose, it is sometimes necessary to quote text containing typos or other doubtful words. In such cases, the author will write “[sic]” to indicate that an error was in the original quoted source rather than in the transcription. Sic is derived from the Latin “sic erat scriptum” or “thus it was written”
- An “atomic typo” is a typo that happens to result in a correctly spelled word that is different from the intended one, and since it’s spelled correctly, the spellchecker cannot find the mistake. Examples include “unclear” instead of “nuclear”, “you” instead of “your”, “Sudan” instead of “sedan”, “Untied States” instead of “United States”, and “the” instead of “they”. The term was used at least as early as 1995 by Robert Terry.
- The Sedan/Sudan example actually happened in real life in 2005, leading to a diplomatic issue with Sudan.
- Storax Sedan was an underground nuclear test conducted in Area 10 of Yucca Flat at the Nevada National Security Site on July 6, 1962 as part of Operation Plowshare, a program to investigate the use of nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes. The radioactive fallout from the test contaminated more US residents than any other nuclear test. The Sedan Crater is the largest human-made crater in the US, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Ellen Tauscher, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from California, used Sedan as an example of a test which produced a considerable amount of radioactive fallout while giving Congressional testimony on the containment of debris from nuclear testing. However, the name “Sedan” was incorrectly transcribed as “Sudan” in the Congressional Record
- The international community quickly took notice, and Sudanese officials responded by stating that “the Sudanese government takes this issue seriously and with extreme importance”. The Chinese Xinhua General News Service even published an article claiming that the Sudanese government blamed the US for raising cancer rates among the Sudanese people. Despite the US embassy in Khartoum issuing a statement clarifying that it was a typographic error, Mustafa Osman Ismail, the Sudanese Foreign Minister, stated that his government would continue investigating the claims
- Gives a whole new dimension to the term “atomic typo”
- The Sedan/Sudan example actually happened in real life in 2005, leading to a diplomatic issue with Sudan.
- Fun facts and anecdotes!
- From a 2009 mentalfloss.com article and a 2017 article on listverse.com
- In 1631, a widely distributed Bible came to be known as the “Sinner’s Bible” when readers noticed that a very important “not” had been omitted” from Exodus 20:14, making the 7th commandment read “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This resulted in printer fines and recalled copies, with only 11 copies known to still exist today
- On July 31, Austin M. Patterson, chemistry editor at Merriam-Webster, sent an internal communication to the printers that included the phrase “D or d, cont./density.” The intention was to add “density” to the existing list of words that the letter “D” can abbreviate. The printer misunderstood, and instead printed a single, run-together word: dord, meaning density. The typo got past proofreaders and appeared on page 771 of the dictionary in 1934. It wasn’t until February 28, 1939, that an editor noticed “dord” lacked an etymology, and an urgent plate change soon followed
- The Therac-25 was a device from the 1980s that was designed to treat cancer patients with controlled bursts of radiation. Radiation is obviously extremely dangerous, so the machine came with a program to keep exposure strictly limited. This program came with a manual to ensure that the operator knew how to handle any issues. Unfortunately, the manual was apparently “written by someone with no knowledge of how communication works.” The “nonsensical word salad” was completely confusing to doctors, so they basically ignored it. When error messages popped up on the Therac-25, they just did what they thought was best. They ended up blasting patients with up to 100 times more radiation than is considered safe. Three died.
- For 12 hours on April 5, 2006, an Alitalia business class fare from Toronto to Cyprus was listed as $39 instead of the usual $3900. Someone at farecompare.com posted the news online, starting a buying stampede that lasted until the fare was corrected. Alitalia initially tried to cancel the already issued tickets but eventually relented, and approximately 2000 people flew to Cyprus for under $200, including taxes
- In early 2009, an Oregon company had to place a rush order for new packaging for its Peace Cereal. It seems a typo on the box sent callers to a phone sex line instead of the cereal maker’s 800 number. So, instead of reaching the Golden Temple consumer relations department, callers were greeted by a recorded voice asking, “Do you love sex?” A spokesperson for the company attributed the incident to human error
- In 2005, a typo by a Japanese stock trader cost one investment bank $224M. The broker meant to sell 1 share of J-Com at 610,000 yen, not 610,000 shares at 1 yen each
- In 1991, a single mistyped character in a line of computer code left 12 million people without telephone service. DSC Communications and Bell Systems confirmed that massive outages on the East and West Coasts could be traced back to that one, tiny error
- On August 14, 2003, a misplaced character buried deep in an Ohio power plant’s XA-21 energy management system began a cascade of glitches that rippled across the NE US and into Canada. Within hours, other power stations were failing, and entire cities were going dark, including New York City. In the end, over 50 million people were left without power, communication, and infrastructure for about 7 hours.
- To make matters worse, the whole thing could have been avoided if one power plant employee hadn’t turned off an alarm. When the initial glitch appeared, the error alarm was disabled while it was “fixed.” The alarm was never turned back on, meaning when the bug acted up again, it remained hidden until it was too late
- On July 22, 1962, the Mariner 1 space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral for its journey to Venus. Shortly after liftoff, however, it became clear that something was wrong. The rocket carrying the probe began to veer off course, putting it into a path that would carry it not only to a crash landing, but one in a populated area. With no other choice, NASA officials sent a self-destruct signal, destroying the probe and spreading debris across several states.
- While coding the spacecraft’s guidance system, a programmer forgot a single hyphen, causing the $80M project to literally go up in flames before it even left the atmosphere
- On October 8, 2013, President Obama’s senior advisor for strategy and communications, Dan Pfeiffer, was discussing politics with a few of his Twitter followers. After a few tweets back and forth about political polarization, Pfeiffer intended to respond with “also a much bigger factor on the right.” Unfortunately, his errant finger found not the “b” key, but its neighbor “n,” as he spelled “bigger.” He didn’t catch it before sending it to his followers, but he was quick to point out that it was “obviously a horrendous typo.”
- In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf was researching the nutritional benefits of different foods, including spinach. While testing for iron content, he mistakenly placed the decimal point for spinach one spot too far to the right. This meant that the vegetable’s 3.5 grams was inflated to 35 grams. Wolf’s mistake was taken as fact until 1937, when the mistake was discovered and attempts were made to correct public opinion. But by then, the popularity of spinach-munching Popeye had solidified its undeserved reputation
- In 2013, the Vatican wanted to commemorate the beginning of Pope Francis’ papacy with a big, bold gesture, so they commissioned a series of gold, silver, and bronze medals from the Italian Mint. These tokens featured an image of Jesus with a Latin phrase that the new Pope found particularly inspirational. They were then sold at the Vatican Publishing House in St. Peter’s Square. However, thousands of holy tokens rolled off the line with Christianity’s most revered figure’s name spelled “Lesus.” However, only four were purchased before the rest of the batch was yanked
- In 1997, Larry Page was in his office at the Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford University with several graduate students, including Sean Anderson. They were having a brainstorming session to think of a name for a website where immense amounts of data would be indexed. Sean suggested “googolplex,” and Larry shortened it to “googol.” Sean immediately ran a domain name search, but mistakenly typed in “google,” which was available. Larry liked the name and within hours he took the step of registering google.com for himself and Sergey Brin
- That wasn’t Google’s last fuck up! While updating a list of harmful sites on January 31, 2009, one employee accidentally listed “/” as a malicious site, which would be blocked by Google. Since nearly every web address contains a slash, the entire internet came to a halt for about an hour as Google prevented access to every single website. Visitors were turned away with a warning screen, and a complete block page if they continued anyway
- From a 2009 mentalfloss.com article and a 2017 article on listverse.com
- History of the holiday
- According to whatnationaldayisit.com, the first detection of National Typo Day occurred on April 6th 2015, but it seems that that may be an error from the algorithm, since National No Typo Day was also first detected on April 6th, 2015 and is actually celebrated on April 6th each year.
- I searched the hashtag #nationaltypoday on Twitter, and found it in Tweets attached to numerous different dates, including 1/22, 1/28, 3/7, 3/27, 9/9, 6/21, 10/28, 10/17, 11/17, among many many others. Couldn’t find a single one for 9/24
- One other social media mention I found was a Facebook post from Gannon’s Gourmet, a family-owned and operated restaurant and catering business in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The post was dated January 29, 2013, and stated, “Today is national typo day so if you are grammaticallyincorrect [sic] you get a free pass. Apple is set to release a 128 gb. Apple ipad 4th. Gen with retina display. Our page would look so good on it. Oh did you know our chicken products are all made with white chicken meat. We focus primarily on the breast for perfect tenderness. Quality produce for you keeps us in business. Thank you all for your continued interest and support. See you at the show….”
- The post has one comment, from the Gannon’s Gourmet page, saying, “The release date is said to be around feb 5th and geared toward business solutions.”
- In short, I think Typo Day may be a typo
Activities to celebrate
- Use #NationalTypoDay on social media
- Visit Gannon’s Gourmet in Allentown PA to enjoy some of their specialties such as their famous “Mom’s Potato Salad”, “Irene’s Tuna Salad”, or a harvest pasta salad with balsamic vinaigrette, all of which are made with NO PRESERVATIVES!
- Take a typing class?
- As with every episode, you should celebrate NATIONAL TYPO DAY with our custom mixtape, which I will now present to you in the form of a novel synopsis. This is an age-old story of love, betrayal, loss, and inevitable nihilism from never learning from our fucking mistakes. Most of this story is presented from a female perspective simply due to the nature of the musical artists that sing each song, but our listeners should feel free to imagine themselves in whichever perspective they can most relate to, regardless of gender:
- Part 1-Chapter 1: Oops by Little Mix featuring Charlie Puth
- Oops, my baby, you woke up in my bed/Oops, we broke up, we’re better off as friends/Now I accidentally need you, I don’t know what to do/Oops, baby, I love you
- Chapter 2: Mistakes by Tove Styrke
- Oh baby, gimme highs and lows/Wanna get close, no clothes/Probably better if I go now/You make me, you make me, you make me wanna make mistakes/Love how bittersweet it tastes/Hey,hey,hey/You make me, you make me, you make me wanna make mistakes/Bend my heart until it breaks/Hey, hey, hey
- Chapter 3: Mistake by Middle Kids
- One day you’re fine, the next you’re crying/And suddenly your engine just stops going/Thought you were healthy but you’re choking/It must be catching up, your smoking/I wish that you never played/You’re standing out in the rain tonight/Like you’ve going something to say to God/And you got a debt to pay back/For something you did way back
- Chapter 4: Whoops by 12th Planet, Mayhem, and pennybirdrabbit
- He stayed/and I let him/And I swam/To the bottom/He ripped my heart out/I’ve bought my soul out/Whoops I have nothing left to give/Who knows if I’ll sink or swim/Whoops I’ve got nothing left to give/Nothing, Nothing
- Chapter 5: Hit ‘Em up Style (Oops) by Blu Cantrell
- Hey ladies/When your man wanna get buck-wild/Just go back and hit ‘em up style/Put your hands on his cash and spend it to the last dime/For all the hard times/Oh, when you go then everything goes/From the crib to the ride and the clothes/So you better let him know that/If he messed up you gotta hit ‘em up
- Chapter 6: Typo by Lyrica Anderson
- You say this is the last time/You say you wouldn’t make me cry/You cheated and I don’t know why/You make me feel/You make me feel some typo way
- Interlude: Typo by Vhsceral
- Part 2-Chapter 7: Whoops Now by Janet Jackson
- Out with your friends and/Fun in the sun now/That’s when the phone rings/Friday evening and I’m all alone at home/And all my friends are having fun/Another week and I’ll leave the machine on/Next time he calls/He’ll hear my voice/Saying loud and clear/Whoops now/Sorry I can’t go
- Chapter 8: Oops (Oh My) by Tweet featuring Missy Elliott
- I looked over to the left/A reflection of myself/That’s why I couldn’t catch my breath
- Chapter 9: Typo by cupcakKe
- Finger me like a typo/Finger, finger me like a typo, ayy
- Chapter 10: Oops!…I Did It Again by Britney Spears
- Oops, I did it again/I played with your heart, got lost in the game/Oh baby, baby/Oops, you think I’m in love/That I’m sent from above/I’m not that innocent
- Chapter 11: Trade Mistakes by Panic! At The Disco
- I may never sleep tonight/As long as you’re still burning bright/If I could trade mistakes for sheep/Count me away before you sleep/I’ll still wait till I trade my mistakes/So they fade away
- Interlude: Typo by Rozada
- Part 3: Chapter 12: Error: Operator by Taking Back Sunday
- Sometimes I swear I can see right through you/Concentrate, concentrate, control, concentrate/This doesn’t feel like anything/We can’t go back, can’t go back, can’t go back
- Chapter 13: You Fucked Up by Ween
- You fucked up, you bitch, you really fucked up/You fucked up, you fuckin’ nazi whore/Well, you dicked me over but now you’ll pay/You fucked up, ahh!
- Chapter 14: Fucked Up World by The Pretty Reckless
- It’s a fucked up world/What do you get/Sex and love and guns, light a cigarette
- Part 1-Chapter 1: Oops by Little Mix featuring Charlie Puth
Playlist
Sources
- https://whatnationaldayisit.com/day/Typo/
- https://whatnationaldayisit.com/day/no-typo/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_error
- https://www.memecenter.com/search/typo
- http://mentalfloss.com/article/21687/7-interesting-typo-tales
- https://listverse.com/2017/03/19/10-horrifyingly-high-profile-typos/
- https://www.facebook.com/126014720802614/posts/today-is-national-typo-day-so-if-you-are-grammaticallyincorrect-you-get-a-free-p/432741296796620/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)
Sedan Crater, Nye County, NV