Now, I can’t spell assassin for love or money, but when I mess it up, my handy-dandy word processor picks it up. The truly dangerous typos are the ones that are real words, spelled correctly, that can vastly alter the meaning of what you’re trying to say. Sure, it’s easy to mix up homonyms like they’re and there and their if you’re not paying attention, but believe me, there are worse typos out there.
One of my favourites is the proximity of the g to the f on a keyboard. I’ve made that little slip where finger-fucking became ginger-fucking. Well now… adding ginger to the mix is a whole ‘nother story! I’ve also missed the L in oblivious. Which makes it obvious. And that’s a typo that could easily slip past a number of editing passes, editors and copy editors.
At work, I regularly have to type the words “official” and “ship”. It’s somewhat disturbing how often these end up as “offal” and “shit”. I’m totally paranoid I’m going to miss one someday. I like my job, so I don’t think there’s any subconscious resentment coming to the surface. The evil portion of the evil day job is solely in reference to the 40+ hours away from writing, not because I dislike my job.
Not too long ago, I read a book that referred a number of times to an ass crack as a crevasse. Well, I’m really hoping the author intended to write crevice, because dictionary.com defines crevasse as “A large, deep fissure” and usually used in reference to glaciers, which gives a sense of scale. When they say large, they mean LARGE. A crevasse in the ass sounds more painful than sexy, and quite frankly the mental picture I'd formed was rather alarming. In one of those odd moments of serendipity, shortly after reading about the ass crevasse, I read a book by Josh Lanyon where he clarifies the difference between the two words… although in reference to geographical features as opposed to ass crack. Made me wonder if he’d read the same ass crevasse story. To be honest, I adore the term “ass crevasse” because of its lyrical quality. Too bad I can’t actually use it in a story, because, well, you saw the definition, right?
Recently I found out I can never create a character named Chris. I tried. But every single time I typed out the name “Chris”, I slapped a T on the end. This is also a typo I don’t understand, because it’s not like I spend a lot of time… or any time in fact… typing out anything of a religious nature. So, rather than risk missing a stray T or two, I decided to change the character’s name and never, ever name a character Chris again.
Got any dangerous typos of your own? Please share!
7 comments:
ROFL! I'm guilty of leaving the R out of breast. "He sucked her beast doesn't conjure a pretty picture!
I once wrote "her" instead of "him", which changed the sentence to mean one of two things. Either the hero was secretly a woman all along, or the police had arrested his horse.
While writing my novel with a hero named Karl my fingers displayed an alarming tendancy to shuffle the letters into "Lark" many times.
Wynter - it may not be a pretty picture, but that's a really good one! Although that is definitely dangerous - very easy to slip that one through editing accidentally :)
Becky - nice... arresting the horse! I've done the letter shuffle before, too. At some point, you have to wonder if it would just be easier to rename, eh?
Oh God...can't breathe...laughing...too much...
I recently read a book that switched 'cypress' and 'Cyprus'. One's a tree, one's a country... Huh? *boggles*
Lol, Scarlett - yeah, that's a BIG difference :)
I'm reading these comments and laughing as hard at them as I did the story! ^_^ I have a friend named Chris and I've added a T many times and had to backspace. Glad I'm not the only one. My biggest typo is to write "the" with the th and e separated, or the e stuck on the front of the next word. I also do the same thing with and. I get an then d in front of something. *_* My autocorrect feature has been a lifesaver. The bad thing is when it's a homynym like KC says. I have a character named Rah whose name somehow refuses to capitalize when I'm typing it. I don't know what the problem is with my keyboard. Surely *I* am not the one with the problem. LOL
Hi Kayelle! I'm definitely thankful for autocorrect, too! And Rah has to be a little bit stubborn, doesn't he? After all, he has to hold his own with Luc :)
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