Friday, April 2, 2010

Tyopgraph* (for Typograph*)

I couldn’t resist the silliness of blogging about tyopgraph*, a typographical error for typograph* that occurs 35 times in Worldcat.

It’s possible that the cataloguers who typed these records were haunted by the typo fairy. Also called the typo demon, these little guys have been haunting printing houses for centuries. 19th century typesetters blamed an invisible or small, winged creature for their errors (or the printing apprentices, who were also called "printers devils"). In the Middle Ages, the demon Titivillus’s job was to ensure monks made errors when copying the scriptures. He carried a sack and would also collect mumbled and misspoken words during prayer.

Painovirhepaholainen (“printing mistake devil”) is the Finnish typo demon. His name has been jokingly misspelled as Pianovirhe, or “piano mistake” – it seems the demon has left the print houses and is causing musicians to hit the wrong notes.

Leanne Olson

1 comment:

bazza said...

Hi, I got here via Blogs of Note and I can see why they picked this blog. It's great fun!
I love the way you 'mispelled' stuff in your profile page.
Here in London, near Fleet Street, formerly the home of all the national newspapers, there is a pub called The Printers Devil; until now I never thought about the name.
Fanks fro tjhe enter-trainment!