the worst place for a typo

I wanted to post this story on Facebook to comment on the utter absurdity of a (tiny) cover model not fitting in her dress, but I can’t get past the hideous typo in the headline. People, if you proofread nothing else, check the headline!

please proofread me

Ack! I just pulled up the site and found a horrible typo in yesterday’s first Weekly Reading post. WordPress was acting really wonky yesterday and I kept having to retrieve autosave versions, and I accidentally grabbed the wrong one. As mortified as any of you may be when you find a typo, it is a million times worse when you make a living finding them and have a blog devoted to snarking on them. So if you ever see one here, don’t hesitate to let me know. I’ll be eternally grateful. And if anyone had any illusions about my infallibility, now you know.

a dixie chick still can’t get respect

I double-checked three times that it was the Wall Street Journal I was reading when I spotted this error. The Dixie Chicks banjo player and Court Yard Hounds lead singer is Emily Robison, not Emily Robinson. And this is no one-time typo: It’s spelled wrong in both occurrences in the post, and in the caption. It’s especially bad because Emily took her name from her ex-husband, Charlie Robison, who is also a very talented country/Americana recording artist, as is his brother Bruce. This is why country has a chip on its shoulder, folks.

just for laughs

If you made it through my three novel-length posts this week, congrats! You are a truly devoted reader, and I appreciate it. I didn’t mean to frontload the week with so much heaviness, but it just sort of turned out that way. So let’s have a couple chuckles, shall we?

• In what she called a ‘great metaphor for show business,’ actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame yesterday — but her name was misspelled. The mistake was caught by a CNN copy editor on his way to work, and you can see in photos of the official ceremony that it’s been temporarily fixed. The Walk of Fame has promised Dreyfus the chiseled-out typo as a souvenir.
• Country singer John Rich is quite a character around these parts, and I appreciated this sign guarding his controversial property in Nashville, both for the typo and the (hopefully humorous) misunderstanding of the Constitution. (via the Tennessean)
• Finally, my friend Caitlin passed on a hilarious layout via Fail Blog. What do you think — honest mistake or a joke that unfortunately went to press?

Update: I just got the nicest email from David Daniel, the CNN producer who saved the day, who says, “My story has been reprinted in many places, but I’m honored that a fellow copy editor would find it worth including.”

fighting words

I’m not sure what I find more disturbing about this protest sign — the typo or the slander of my beloved Mr. Jefferson.

spot the typo

Elf cosmetics has been running this on its website for months. Why has no one caught the mistake?

buyer beware

Scammers abound on eBay, but one thing I always look for when shopping the auction site is the spelling and grammar in the listings. I find minor errors even in trusted sellers’ listings, but when a description is riddled with them — or worse, the product or brand name is incorrect — I take it as a bad sign and move along.