I saw a sign on the way to work this morning that would undoubtedly quicken the pulses of Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson, authors of the chronicle The Great Typo Hunt. It was a sort of trifecta of typos, containing errors in spelling, punctuation, and/or syntax. "We accept," it read, "Medicaid, Medicare, Fidelis, CDPHP, SWH, and others insurences." That last bit should be either "other insurance" or, possibly, "others' insurance." But Insurences, while obviously a rather awkward shortening of "insurance policies," still misspells the root word insurance. There was only one case of this disorder detected in the OhioLINK database, but there were 96 found in WorldCat. (Note, however, that Insurent happens to be the name of an apartment lease guaranty company.) Just to be on the safe side today, check up on this typo in your own library's catalog.(Metropolitan Life Insurance building, New York City, July 2003, from Wikimedia Commons.)
Carol Reid
2 comments:
This is killing me. I can find two typos in the line "We accept ... Medicaid, Medicare, Fidelis, CDPHP, SWH, and others insurences." "Insurences" has already been discussed; "others" should either be singular or with an apostrophe in order to agree. What really obvious thing am I missing?
Thanks. I apologize for being ambiguous. What I meant was that, in addition to the misspelling and the use of the word "others," there is also the matter of syntax since "insurances" isn't really a word. Or is it? The dictionary gives the last definition for "insurance" as "an insurance premium." So if "premium" can be made plural with an S, can "insurance" also? Anyone?
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