Typos

Uh oh! Typos happen. With so many words churned out in the media – in newspapers, advertising, and online – it’s a wonder there aren’t more errors.  Here’s one from a flyer for a major supermarket chain. The word cheat’s seems to have lost its apostrophe somewhere along the line.   No biggie. Some typos, however, have more serious consequences than others. In 2009 an engraver who spelt Chile on the 50 peso coin left out the bottom bit from the letter l, so it reads as Chiie. He lost his job – but only after a few million coins had been printed.

Sometimes it’s more than just embarrassment. The so-called Wicked Bible of 1631, left out the word not in the seventh commandment, which resulted in the instruction “thou shalt commit adultery”. The printers were fined £300 for corrupting public morals.

For more fun with other people’s mistakes, check out Regret The Error, a blog that tracks media mistakes and corrections around the world. You can read their list of  publishing howlers for 2009. Enjoy!

Euphemisms

 New Water? Sounds good, doesn’t it? In Singapore, that’s the name they give to recycled sewage. Euphemisms such as New Water serve a purpose. They help us talk about things that make us feel uncomfortable: death, old age, pregnancy – or drinking recycled sewage.

The popular Dead Parrot Sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus has an amusing list of euphemisms for death. It’s quoted so often that the phrase pining for the fjords has now entered the vocabulary. It certainly sounds better than dead.

Euphemisms are used everywhere to either cover up an unpleasant truth or gloss over a situation. Rightsizing sounds better than downsizing. Negative patient care outcome is so much more acceptable than the patient died. In diplomatic circles an argument is merely a full and frank discussion. When torture is called enhanced interrogation techniques, it doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. Prices aren’t increased. They’re adjusted. Chocolate bars aren’t made smaller. They’re resized.

Drinking New Water. Yeah. Doesn’t sound so bad.