Rehtoric* (for Rhetoric*)

I don't want to cause a riot here or bruise anyone's ego, but this is clearly not a rhetorical question: "How many times does our typo of the day show up in your library catalog?" We found it five times in OhioLINK and 39 times in WorldCat, which is only enough to make it a "low probability" typo on the Ballard list, but it's worth looking out for in any case. My own database contains just one example of Rehtoric* and it's on a record from 1793, so maybe that was the way they spelled it back then. Rhetoric itself is often highly specialized, generally subjective, and frequently very political. So it's incumbent, perhaps, upon catalogers to make it as accessible to our patrons as possible.

(Sign art spotted in Pittsfield, Mass., from the Empty Set Projects website.)

Carol Reid