Typo of the day for librarians

Scolars* (for Scholars*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Scholars often have highly toned brains and razor-sharp wits, but also flabby muscles, failing eyesight, and poor posture—perhaps even a touch of scoliosis—from too much hunching over bunches of books. Scolars* turns up nine times in OhioLINK (one being a correctly spelled foreign word), making it a "low probability" typo on the Ballard list, but one you will definitely wish to avoid if you consider yourself any sort of intellectual.

(The Castle of Knowledge, from the Cardiff University SCOLAR website. SCOLAR stands for Special Collections and Archives.)

Carol Reid

Stateg* (for Strategy, etc.)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Eggs are rarely static, what with falling out of nests, rolling down the White House lawn, descending Fallopian tubes, and frying, scrambling, or poaching in hot oil or boiling water. It's an eggsistential question, of course—nothing ever stays the same for long. But when ovum leave home, it can be a precipitous decline. Humpty Dumpty had a Great Fall. Kitchen eggs are smacked against pans and bowls. Being cracked, in fact, is what eggs are all about: someone's either trying to get into them or out. On the other hand, certain Ukrainian practitioners paint, polish, and preserve their Easter eggs for posterity. And I recently read that for your body to make use of the good cholesterol in an egg, the yolk should remain intact while cooking. However you take your eggs, enjoy. Or as Burgess Meredith says to Merle Oberon in the Ernst Lubitsch movie That Uncertain Feeling: "Egeshegera!" (Actually spelled egészségére, it means "Cheers!" in Hungarian.) There are 123 eggsamples of Stateg* in OhioLINK, most of which are typos for strategy, strategies, and strategic. Do you have room for one more pun? Eggsit stage right...

Carol Reid

(Wild bird's egg photo by Kim Pardi, June 21, 2005, from flickr.)

Dimention* (for Dimension*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

As children learning to spell we’re so often reminded to look for a “tion” even when a word sounds like it should end in shun. So it’s not surprising that we might make a typing error in the opposite direction, assuming a tion when there is none.

This is the case with Dimention*, a typo of high probability on the Ballard list, that should be spelled Dimension*.

Looking at a video of a “simple rotation” of a four-dimensional object hurts my mind a little: http://www.youtube.com/v/5xN4DxdiFrs

All the better to make typing errors, I suppose…perhaps I should take the afternoon off to rest up?

While we can’t go back through time (often referred to as the fourth dimension) to fix our typing errors, we can fix them after the fact, with a quick catalogue search.

Leanne Olson

Guiness + Alec (for Alec Guinness)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

An actor is at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.
– Sir Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai, and in 1980 won a special Academy Award for his lifelong career of "advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances".

In 1959, he was knighted for his film and theatre achievements, becoming Sir Alec Guinness.

Rumour has it that in some prints of The Bridge on the River Kwai his last name is misspelled as Guiness. This error appears in library catalogues as well: Alec + Guiness is a typo of high probability, with 28 hits in OhioLINK.

Leanne Olson

Comdy (for Comedy)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

No royal curse, no Trojan horse,
And a happy ending, of course!
Goodness and badness,
Panic is madness--
This time it all turns out all right!
Tragedy tomorrow,
Comedy tonight!

-- from Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Aristotle in his Poetics, a critique of Greek drama, distinguished between tragedy and comedy in this way: tragedy looks at men who are better than average (the gods and heroes of Greek myth) and comedy at those who are lower. Comedy looks at our failures and faults and, through amusement, attempts to correct them.

Comedy also emphasizes the social aspect of humankind, which can still be seen today—for example, in the way sitcoms are often positioned around a family, workplace, or group of friends.

Don’t want your coworkers laughing at you? Then be sure to include that E in the word comedy and avoid comdy, a typo of moderate probability on the Ballard List.

(Photo: Bruce Dow as Pseudolus in the Stratford Festival’s production of A Funny Thing…)

Leanne Olson

Antartic* (for Antarctic*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

In Canada the summer is taking a while to heat up, so looking at this picture isn't the refreshing treat it normally might be in July.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the lowest recoded temperature on Earth was in Antarctica at Vostok station: -89.2°C / -128.6°F on July 21, 1983.

Antarctic penguins stay warm by being large (the Emperor Penguin weighs around 30 kg / 66 lb, keeping a low surface area : volume ratio), and through a layer of fat under the skin that keeps them insulated. They also stand on their heels and tail feathers when on the ice or snow, reducing the surface area for the cold to enter their body, and they keep warm by huddling together.

When penguins get too hot from being active, they can lose this heat through their flippers and feet.

Antartic* is a high probability typing error on the Ballard list. Don't let your own flippers make this typo!

(Penguin photograph from CoolAntarctica.com)

Leanne Olson

Dislay* (for Display*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.
-- Frida Kahlo

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954).

Kahlo put herself on display (not dislay) quite frequently—the drama of her own life was depicted through her paintings, many of them self-portraits. The bisexual painter had a tumultuous relationship with fellow artist Diego Rivera, marrying him twice. She also lived most of her life in pain, with polio as a child and as an adult, after a bus accident from which she was never able to fully recover. This pain is depicted in many of her self-portraits, such as Henry Ford Hospital, painted after a miscarriage.

Kahlo is sometimes considered a Surrealist, though she denied this herself. Her intense, bright style based on Mexican folk art, as well as the "small scale, fantasy and a primitivistic style help to distance the viewer from the horrific subject-matter", according to Grove Art Online.

The painting above is Self-Portrait with Monkey, taken from FridaKahlo.com

Leanne Olson

Throuth (for Through)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

People have been known to seek Truth in many different ways. Some do it through study, some through observation, some through service, and some through meditation. They pledge their troth to these practices like others pledge love and loyalty to a spouse. Such efforts do not always pay off, though, causing them to throw over the truth in order to line up like pigs at the trough of sensual delights. Today's typo looks as if it might be standing in for some of the words that appear in the first several sentences above (truth, through, troth, though, throw, and trough). However, the nine we found in OhioLINK were all for the word through. This flub seems to occur when we think we're all through after getting to the U and start over at the beginning before finishing up at the end.

(La Vérité by Jules Joseph Lefebvre, 1870, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Sliver* (for Silver*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

In today's tarnished economy, a small sliver of silver may soon be worth more than a tall pile of paper. Eleven results were returned for a search in OhioLINK on Sliver* + Silver*. One, for a recording by Fats Waller, renders the title: "By the light of the slivery [i.e. silvery] moon." One appears to contain both words correctly spelled. And in another case, we're faced with either a Henry Silver or a Henry Sliver, although I'm gonna put my money on the first. There may, of course, be other cases of Sliver* for silver* in the catalog, but since both are words in their own right, a combined search is probably the best way to data mine them efficiently. At any rate, I only found pieces of eight, so it could certainly be a lot worse. Remember, while your piece of the pie may be just a tiny sliver, every cloud has a silver lining.

(I like the doting way the uploader describes this picture on Wikimedia: "A small, shiny, freshly refined lump of pure, fine silver metal.")

Carol Reid

Diesease* (for Disease, etc.)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Cartoon animators like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, along with "novelty song" composers like Roy Atwell, often found ways of poking fun at death by the use of absurdist hyperbole. In 1915's "Some Little Bug Is Going To Find You," Atwell writes:

In these days of indigestion
It's oftentimes a question
Of what to eat and what to leave alone.
For each microbe and bacillus
Has a different way to kill us
And in time they always claim us for their own.

There are germs of every kind
In any food that you can find
In the market or upon a bill of fare.
Drinking water's just as risky
As the so-called deadly whiskey
And it's often a mistake to breathe the air.

For some little bug is going to find you someday,
Some little bug will creep behind you someday,
Then he'll send for his bug friends and all your trouble ends,
Some little bug is going to find you some day...

Today we find eight bugs in OhioLINK for the word disease*. The diagnosis could be as benign as a slip of the finger, but take care not to trip over the Freudian as you're going out. While curing your catalog of Diesease*, also be on the lookout for resident bookworms and the rest of their bug friends (silverfish, cockroaches, and beetles).

(Image from "Falling Hare," a 1943 Merrie Melodies short, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Filmak* (for Filmmak*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

This typo turns up an amazing 898 times in OhioLINK today. Undoubtedly, some of these are correctly spelled foreign words or trade names, while others are misspellings on the piece itself. Filmmaker and its ilk are very commonly misspelled words, in which one M is mistakenly substituted for the two M's the words actually should contain. German filmmaker Fritz Lang is largely known for Metropolis, the most expensive silent feature ever made at the time of its release, and the thriller M, which was his first sound movie and the one he considered his best. Although Lang denied the connection, M was thought to be based upon the case of Peter Kürten, the "Vampire of Düsseldorf." According to Wikipedia: "A police psychiatrist in the film cites serial killers Fritz Haarmann and Karl Grossmann as examples of how such criminals can conceal themselves in everyday society." Double letters are not concealed in those two surnames and in fact show up in a great many German and English words. Don't let the two M's in filmmaker and its relatives get away from you; you're sure to catch a least of few of them in your own catalog. Although in the case of transcribed fields, you'll probably have to do some additional investigative work.

(Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in their Berlin apartment, 1923 or 1924, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Lanuga* (for Language*)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

With 22 hits in OhioLINK on Lanuga*, this typo for language* shows up in the B or "high probability" section of the Ballard list. It turns out that lanuga actually is a word in Esperanto, meaning "covered with fine hairs or fluffy." Esperanto was conceived in the late 19th century by Dr. Ludociv Lazarus, a Jewish ophthalmologist from Bialystok, Russia, and was created to help promote global harmony and understanding. It is currently spoken by an estimated two million people worldwide, although at one time speakers of the language were persecuted by both Hitler and Stalin. Surprisingly enough, none of the typos we found were for Laguna Beach in southern California, another locus of love and peace, and former haven for those who like it long, straight, curly, fuzzy ... hair!

(Picture of baby Ginger Monkey, all orange and lanuga and looking as if it might start speaking Esperanto any minute, taken by "Rob" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Belguim (for Belgium)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

On this day in 1945, the Charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 of the 51 original member states (Poland’s representative signed it later).

Belgium was one of the original signing members of the UN. Making a spelling error such as “Belguim” (a high probability typo on the Ballard list) on a document as important as this one would be most embarrassing—fortunately, this didn’t happen.

Perhaps legitimately embarrassing for Belgium was its inclusion in Life, the Universe, and Everything, the third book in Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. The U.S. edition of the book was censored, with swear words replaced by such terms as “kneebiter” and “swut”. “Belgium” was also used as a substitute word, and it was described as the most offensive word in the galaxy.

Pictured are tulips in Brussels, photo taken from http://www.travelphotoguide.com/

Leanne Olson

Lizst (for Liszt)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

The boatman in his small craft
Is seized with longings, and sighs.
He sees not the rocks fore and aft;
He looks only up towards the skies.

I fear that the waves shall be flinging
Both vessel and man to their end;
That must have been what with her singing
The Lorelei did intend.

- translation of verses from Heine's Die Lorelei,
set to music by Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and educator, one of the leaders of the Romantic movement. He also had a rather difficult name to spell: the typo Lizst occurs over a hundred times in Worldcat.

Liszt was known for his piano works and his virtuosity at the instrument, but his song compositions should not be overlooked. He paid strong attention to interpreting the words of the poems and the emotion therein.

According to Grove Music Online, he wrote notes throughout his manuscripts with instructions to the singer such as “‘fast gesprochen’ (almost spoken), ‘mit halber Stimme’ (with a half-voice), ‘geheimnisvoll’ (mysterious), ‘phlegmatisch’ (dull or heavy) and ‘hintraumend’ (day-dreaming).”

(image of Liszt from pianoparadise.com)

Leanne Olson

Pheonix (for Phoenix)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

In both Eastern and Western mythology, the phoenix is a rare flaming or glowing bird, representing the sun and symbolizing new beginnings.

In Greece and Egypt, it embodied immortality, often tied to the sun god (Helios or Ra). Just as the sun moves across the sky, disappears and is reborn the next morning, the phoenix dies in fire and is regenerated from its own ashes.

The phoenix has no mate and one of these creatures can only be born from the death of the previous one. In some Renaissance writing, the phoenix was considered a delicacy—since only one is alive at a time in the entire world, dining on phoenix is the rarest of possible meals.

While the phoenix may be a lonely bird, the typo pheonix has plenty of company. Pheonix is a high probability error on the Ballard list, occurring 12 times in OhioLINK and over 300 in Worldcat. It can occur in any number of places in the catalogue, as a location of a conference or publication, an author or actor’s name, a spacecraft, a publishing company, part of a title, or even a comic book character.

(Phoenix painting from http://kalaalog.com/)

Leanne Olson

Helsinski (for Helsinki)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

This typo for the capital city of Finland, Helsinki, is a high probability error on the Ballard List, and there are over 450 occurrences of Helsinski in Worldcat!

It’s not unfitting that Helsinki is a frequently misspelled name, since the city actually has its own slang which does not conform to normal Finnish spelling and grammar rules.

This slangi is a mishmash of colloquial Finnish and words borrowed from other languages: English, Swedish, German and Russian.

Slangi is characterized by a very quick speech, shortened or diminutive forms of words, voiced consonants not commonly used in Finnish, such as d, and a breaking of the rules of vowel harmony.

Often, an extra S is added to the beginning of words in slangi—this would not, however, justify that extra S near the end of our typo Helsinkski!

Pictured above is the Helsinki Cathedral, a major landmark in the city.

(Photograph from http://taivasalla.net)

Leanne Olson

Lenon, Lennen, or Lenonn (for Lennon)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

There's room at the top they are telling you still

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
A working class hero is something to be

-from "Working Class Hero" by John Lennon

On this day, June 22, in 1981 while on trial for the murder of John Lennon, Mark David Chapman dropped the insanity defense and changed his plea to guilty, citing a conversation with God as his reason.

Lennon was famous for his work with the Beatles, but in his short life he also made marks with his solo music and political protests.

His solo recordings were experimental, such as the noise collages on his Unfinished Music albums. The often harsh, confessional pieces on the album John Lennon/ Plastic Ono Band were influenced by Lennon’s foray into primal scream therapy.

The song "Working Class Hero" made waves for its unforgiving language. Some radio stations banned the song because of the F-word, while other station managers defended it, facing penalties including fines of up to $10,000.

Try not to misspell Lennon’s name, lest you accidentally censor him in your own catalogue!

(Photograph from Allmusic.com)

Leanne Olson

Audibook (for Audiobook)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

WorldCat lists many examples of "audibook" (for "audiobook") or "audibooks" (for "audiobooks"). Originally released in 2007, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was ranked in the top 10 bestselling audiobooks on Amazon this week.

Catherine Scullion

Contianer (for Container)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

WorldCat lists many examples of "contianer" (for "container").
"A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into."--Helen Dunmore

Catherine Scullion

Porduc* (for Produce/d, Production) + Reporduc* (for Reproduce/d, Reproduction)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:06:00 +0000

OhioLINK lists 10 examples of "reporduction" (for "reproduction") and 5 examples of "porduction" (for "production"). "Porduced" (for "produced") and "Reporduced" (for "reproduced") is each listed 4 times in OhioLINK.
"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it the Reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the mist."--Edgar Allan Poe

Catherine Scullion

Presentaton (for Presentation)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:29:00 +0000

"Presentation" is commonly used (and misspelled as "presentaton") in DVD descriptions (i.e. full screen or wide screen presentation). There are 5 examples of "presentaton" in OhioLINK. John McTiernan, the director of the 1988's Die Hard and 1995's Die Hard 3, has been quoted as saying: "The entertainment is in the presentation." Officer John McClane would definitely agree!

Catherine Scullion

Communcation, Communicaton (for Communication)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:15:00 +0000

There are 31 examples of "communcation" and 17 examples of "communicaton" in OHIOLink. Communication is essential to every species. We can communicate in various ways, from a hug, a “hello”, to a handshake. Author Anne Morrow Lindbergh (fellow aviator/wife of Charles Lindbergh) once commented: “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” The frequency of the misspelling of “communication” may also provide reason to lose sleep!

Catherine Scullion

Unvie* (for Universal, University, etc.)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

The purpose of a university is to broaden the mind, which hopefully can lead to an opening of the heart. Unvindictive is defined as "forgiving; inclined or able to forgive and show mercy." It is easy to forgive a naughty child, but it's far harder, for example, to show mercy to those responsible for the gas chambers and death camps of World War II. As Portia says in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice: "The quality of mercy is not strain'd..." This means that forgiveness can not be constrained or forced, but must flow freely from the injured party. The drawing to the right is by Carlos Latuff, a political cartoonist born in 1968 and currently living in Rio de Janeiro. Latuff is the second-prize winner of the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition organized by a Tehran-based Iranian daily.

(Picture from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Italain, etc. (for Italian)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

This bragging bit of agitprop had lain inside a Fascist schoolbook from 1943 until recently, when it was found and posted to Wikimedia Commons. Italain was found four times in OhioLINK, along with Italin four times and Italan once. The word Fascism is derived from the Italian Fascio (or "bundle") and had long referred to political action groups across a broad spectrum. (For what it's worth, fasciate means "to swathe, wrap with bands" and is recalled mainly because it was one of the words that laid me low in a local spelling bee a couple years ago.) Benito Mussolini was a lifelong troublemaker who dabbled in various movements and parties before eventually becoming one of Europe's most infamous dictators. The Italian occupation of Ethiopia was notorious for its war crimes, which involved the use of mustard gas, forced labor camps, public gallows, and the mutilation of corpses. The 1937 slaughter in Addis Ababa was especially awful and invited the opprobrium of the international community.

(1942 Italian propaganda poster announcing "We Will Return" after the Amba Alagi and Gondar battles in Ethiopia, scanned and modified by Brunodambrosio.)

Carol Reid

Shiek (for Sheik)

noreply@blogger.com (librarytypos) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:00:00 +0000

There are 55 examples of Shiek in OhioLINK (and five of Shieks), making this one more exception to the shaky "I before E..." rule. Most of these records reference the song "The Sheik of Araby"; some contain [sic] or [i.e.]; a few appear to be personal names. Lo sceicco bianco or The White Sheik was an early Fellini film made in 1952. According to Wikipedia: "The male lead, Leopoldo Trieste, a playwright who did not consider himself an actor, reluctantly auditioned for Fellini. During the audition Fellini asked him to compose a sonnet that the lead character would have written to his wife. The poem which begins 'She is graceful, sweet and teeny...' was included in the film." Today's typo is none of those things, but you don't have to be an actor to play a big part in eradicating it.

(Federico Fellini from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid