Breif (for Brief)

On this last typo-day of the year, allow me to be brief. I’ll merely convey my best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2012 to all.

(Oh, you knew it couldn’t be that simple! Breif is supposed to be a typo of moderate probability, but a search in the OhioLINK database retrieves 73 hits. Many are already marked “[sic],” which means you could reasonably expect the same in your own catalog. Additionally, the Oxford English Dictionary lists “breif” as a variant form, so its usage in older works may be correct.)

(Grape-Shot: 1915 English Magazine Illustration of a Lady Riding a Champagne Cork, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Batle* (for Battle, etc.)

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho
Jericho Jericho
Joshua fit the battle of Jericho
And the walls come tumbling down

This popular African-American spiritual is thought to date from the first half of the nineteenth century. On the surface, it portrays the fight of Joshua and the Israelites against Canaan, although its alternate meaning is a promised escape from slavery. The song has been recorded by artists as varied as Mahalia Jackson, the Swingle Singers, Elvis Presley, and actor/musician Hugh Laurie.

Batle* is from the low-probability section of the Ballard list. However, an OhioLINK search limited to English will still pull up more than 400 results. Excluding the legitimate surname Batley will bring it down to a more manageable 15 entries in the quest to isolate true instances of today’s typo.

(The Taking of Jericho, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Radiaton* (for Radiation, etc.)

The 19-mile exclusion zone around the site of the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine is now home to a thriving wildlife population. In the 25 years since a disastrous meltdown required the government-ordered evacuation of more than 100,000 residents, nature has reclaimed much of the area. But scientists still disagree about how much damage the high levels of radiation have inflicted on local populations of birds, fish, wolves, and other animals.

What is clear is that the region will remain unsafe for human habitation for years to come. And yet some have chosen to return to their villages, willing to take the chance that old age will kill them before radiation-induced cancers or other illnesses can.

Fortunately, radiaton* is not dangerous in an online catalog, merely annoying. It should require little effort to eradicate this low-probability typo. Currently, there are nine entries for it in OhioLINK.

(International symbol for radiation, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Smakes (for Snakes)

When American comedian and singer-songwriter Jim Stafford penned his whimsical 1974 hit “(I Don’t Like) Spiders & Snakes,” did he deliberately choose to name two of the fears that commonly afflict us humans? Google “top phobias,” and nearly all the resulting lists feature arachnophobia (fear of spiders), while a fair number also mention ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). In fact, LiveScience calls the fear of snakes one of the most prevalent and suggests it could be evolutionarily imprinted. As for Stafford’s song, it was successful enough to earn a place on Billboard’s Hot 100 Country Songs, a list of the top country songs to appear on its chart during the first 50 years.

Smakes, a lowest-probability typo, is not nearly so ubiquitous as its associated phobia. There is only one entry for it in the OhioLINK database.

(Caravaggio’s Medusa, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Pressent, Pressents (for Present, Presents)

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

Without doubt, the most humorous Christmas present I received this year was “Lizzie’s Leftovers,” a small tin adorned with this jump-rope rhyme and a portrait of the infamous Ms. Borden herself. Inside was a tasty selection of foil-wrapped chocolate body parts!

I remember well the 1975 made-for-television movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden, in which actress Elizabeth Montgomery played the title role. But until I searched for Lizzie’s portrait on Wikipedia, I had no idea America’s favorite witch might actually have been related to the alleged axe murderess–they were thought to be sixth cousins, once removed.

Pressent appears five times in English-language OhioLINK entries, while a search for Pressents yields one.

(Lizzie Borden, circa 1889, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak

Vladm* + Vladi* (for Vladi* or possibly Vladm*)

One of my very favorite Christopher Hitchens essays concerns one of my all-time favorite novels, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. In an essay, which appeared in the December 2005 Atlantic, Hitchens begins by saying: "In Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, in which young female students meet in secret with Xeroxed copies of Nabokov's masterpiece on their often chaste and recently chadored laps, it is at first a surprise to discover how unscandalized the women are. Without exception, it turns out, they concur with Vera Nabokov in finding that the chief elements of the story are 'its beauty and pathos'..." Vladimir Nabokov loved language and butterflies. Regarding the former, please turn to Lolita if you've not yet had the exquisite pleasure. As to the latter, Nabokov was also a lepidopterist who identified and named the Karner Blue Butterfly, a species first spotted in Albany's "Pine Bush," a beautiful and dwindling ecosystem comprising pine barrens, lupines, and little blue butterflies. There were 29 cases of today's typo in OhioLINK and 404 in WorldCat.

(Butterfly drawn by Vladimir Nabokov for his wife Vera, "Christmas 1969," from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Cristmas* (for Christmas*)

The only difference between today's typo and the word for which it stands is the letter H. Which for me this week stands for Hitchens, who famously stood four-square against Christmas. Christopher Hitchens passed away a fortnight ago, but his spirit remains as strong as ever among his many devout followers. He argued fervently against the promotion of religion, the existence of God, and the hypocrisy of many Christians during his final years (his book God Is Not Great came out in 2007) and somehow it seems fitting that his first posthumously published essay should concern the "forced merriment" of Christmas. It seems like it should be one of the happiest days of the year, but then there's always a Hitch. If it's not the compulsory cheer, it's the unrealistic expectations, the crass materialism, the shameless lying to children, the pious bias against non-believers, the holiday-themed Muzak, the drunken mall Santas, the phony flying reindeer, the rock-hard fruitcake, noxious eggnog, hideous sweaters, preening "Christmas letters," etc., etc. Cristmas* was found eight times in OhioLINK and 43 times in WorldCat.

("Where Santa Claus Lives," 1900, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Natoin* (for Nation*)

I first became aware of Christopher Hitchens when he began writing for The Nation in the early 1980s. His column appeared side by side with that of his then friend and political comrade Alexander Cockburn. They were the very first things (helpfully arranged on facing pages) that I turned to every week and I'm sure that was true for many Nation readers. Victor Navasky recalls how one day, shortly after hiring him, "around five p.m. a dimpled five-o'clock shadowed face peered through my half-open door, surrounded by a haze of smoke. 'Drink?' asked the deep, richly accented baritone voice that accompanied all of the above. If it is possible in one word to convey an upper-class sensibility attached to a heart ostentatiously identified with the toiling masses, Christopher Hitchens succeeded." Hitchens succeeded at more things than most of us have ever attempted and, though he wasn't able to outwit cancer, his "elegance, wit, and brilliance," as his grieving editor put it, will live on in the hearts of all who knew and admired him. There were eight instances of Natoin* in OhioLINK today and 36 in WorldCat.

(Current and past editors of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Victor Navasky, courtesy of the New York Times.)

Carol Reid

Dirv* + Driv* (for, usually, Driv*)

Virtually all eight cases of today's typo found in OhioLINK (and 167 in WorldCat) occurred as part of the phrase "CD-ROM drive," a common enough usage nowadays, although to pre-Internet generations, the word drive had a distinctly different connotation. Someday soon we may find ourselves explaining to befuddled young people that in olden days cars didn't just go: people had to drive them. Christopher Hitchens was reportedly a rather bad driver; this, however, may have simply been a principled refusal to get behind the wheel after a typical night out, given his legendary appetite for alcohol. On the other hand, it seems that he also nursed the rather nice fantasy of tooling around in a bookmobile, driving the library to the patrons, the teeming masses yearning to read free. In his introduction to The Best American Essays 2010, Hitchens writes: "When I was very young I lived in a remote village on the edge of an English moorland. Every week, a mobile library would stop near my house, and I would step up through the back door of a large van to find its carpeted interior lined with bookshelves.... If I live to see retirement, I would quite like to be a driver of such a vehicle, bringing books to eager young readers like a Librarian in the Rye." Christopher Hitchens has now gone on to that Great Bookmobile in the Sky, and we're left down here below to thank and praise him for all the wonderful reading material he's brought us over the years.

(Bookmobile of the Zagreb City Libraries, Croatia, 12 October 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Fotun* (for Fortun*)

Phil Ochs, whom I blogged about here once before, was born on Dec. 19, 1940, and died on April 9, 1976, at the age of 35. I just watched the 2010 documentary film entitled Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune, which features a few cameo appearances by fellow cultural avatar Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens states that, while it's easy to love Bob Dylan, it takes a special sort of person to appreciate Phil Ochs. I come from a family of "folkies" (folk music aficionados) and was introduced to the music of Phil Ochs when I was a teenager. Like Hitchens, Ochs was an alcoholic and I was well aware that he had died by suicide, however the film made me much more cognizant of his inherited manic-depression along with his deep professional and political disenchantment. Listening to some of his songs as I write this, I am made both melancholy and nostalgic, especially by the words to the unbearably poignant "When I'm Gone." Phil Ochs, much like Christopher Hitchens, was blessed with a truly beautiful voice; both men had the misfortune of losing their voices, to some extent, shortly before their untimely deaths. Long live Phil Ochs and Christopher Hitchens, without whom the Sixties simply would not have been the same. Fotun* was found four times in OhioLINK, and 72 times in WorldCat, although fortunately not all of these are typos. Many of them are, though, so be sure to check your own catalog when you get a chance.

(Poster created for a concert at the Salle Claude Champagne Music School ,Vincent d'Indy, now belonging to the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal, 1 May 1975, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Kippling*, Kilping*, Kiplng* (for Kipling*)

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.

I've quoted this charming verse before, but please indulge me once again. Christopher Hitchens, who passed away late last night in a hospital in Houston, wrote about Rudyard Kipling for The Atlantic Monthly; he also once wrote about drinking tea. There wasn't very much that Hitchens didn't write about (see his 2011 book of essays, Arguably, for so many marvelous examples) and with his sudden, if not entirely unexpected, demise, it feels like the bottom's dropped out of the universe. I wanted to eulogize Hitchens today in this all too modest space, but it just felt too enormous, too difficult, too wrong somehow. In the midst of a furious flurry of blog postings in the wake of his death, Alexandra Petri warns against the tendency to wax lugubrious or try and get too personal. I have to confess that I too, like all the others, am feeling sort of stupidly sentimental at the moment and possessed of a precious little "how I once met Christopher Hitchens" story, but rest assured I shall restrain myself. Instead, I'll approach the subject obliquely, a little at a time. Sneak up on it, as it were. So today it's about Rudyard Kipling; in my heart, though, it's all about Hitchens. (The typo Kippling* turned up once in OhioLINK and 55 times in WorldCat—14 if combined with the correct spelling. We also found a handful of both Kilping* and Kiplng*.)

(Portrait of Rudyard Kipling from Current History of the War, vol. I, December 1914–March 1915, New York Times Company, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Paly*+ Play* (for Play* or Paly*)

Did the March 19, 1971, episode of TV's The Odd Couple ("What Does a Naked Librarian Say to You?") go beyond the pale in its allusions to public nudity and the stereotyping of our profession? Well, probably, yeah, but on viewing it over forty years later, it still speaks to me with its lighthearted references to both censorship and librarianship. Written by Peggy Elliott and Ed Scharlach, the story concerns Felix's new girlfriend, Madelyn (played by Marj Dusay), who tells him she's a librarian as a means of throwing him off the track to her real occupation, which at the moment is being the lead actress in a nude off-Broadway play. (Murray the cop remembers arresting her during a recent raid on the theater.) The title of the episode is a play on the 1970 film by Allen Funt called What Do You Say to a Naked Lady? Today's combination typo found 23 results in OhioLINK (half a dozen of which were false hits on proper names and words like palynological) and 431 in WorldCat. What do you say you check this one out in your own library's catalog?

(Photo of Marj Dusay, found on the Web.)

Carol Reid

Railraod* (for Railroad*)

Today is the birthday of Erastus Corning. Which Erastus Corning, you say? The former mayor of Albany, New York? Well, it seems that there were two of those. The original Erastus Corning was born on Dec. 14, 1794. He was elected to office as Albany's mayor and served from 1834 to 1837. A century later, his great-grandson, Erastus Corning 2nd, also became mayor of this fair (?) city, holding onto the job for more than 40 years. (Growing up around here, the words Mayor, Corning, and Democratic Machine were virtually synonymous. His minions—that is to say, the voters—looked upon him as a benevolent despot. I wouldn't exactly say we were railroaded, but I was in college by the time I realized it was actually possible for anyone other than Corning to be mayor.) Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a good Corning-related typo for the day, but Erastus the elder might just as well have been known as "Mr. Railroad." He was president of the Utica-Schenectady Railroad and a major shareholder and developer of railroads throughout New York State and beyond. Railraod* turned up 13 times in OhioLINK and 289 times in WorldCat. Take a good look today at your own political "machine" in order to rid it of any corruption you might find there.

(Portrait of Erastus Corning, between 1855 and 1865, by either Mathew Brady or Levin C. Handy, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Aslyum* (for Asylum*)

Um, as lies go, most asylums are probably not all they're cracked up to be. The Opal (1851–1860) was the newsletter of the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, New York, and was a fascinating attempt to shed light on this often maddening subject from the point of view of the patients themselves, who did much of the writing and editing. "Devoted to Usefulness," the newsletter published poems, essays, news articles, correspondence, and editorials; covered local and national events of interest; and addressed topics of a political, religious, literary, and social nature, sometimes in a humorous or satirical way. It also discussed current attitudes and theories concerning mental illness. The Opal's historic and ongoing legacy can be found in the mission of The Opal Project, which is dedicated to "ending psychiatric oppression" in all its forms. Some mental patients are indeed paranoid, but they may not have been the only ones. In 1875, Commissioner Norris of the Kings County Lunatic Asylum stated, with regard to reports of abuse: "This sort of thing is very common among lunatics; they are always imagining themselves in great danger of being killed by their keepers." Well, perhaps so. And perhaps their keepers were always imagining, in some cases anyway, that the inmates weren't running the asylum. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure I witnessed three cases of Aslyum* in OhioLINK this morning, and 40 more in WorldCat.

(Cover of The Opal, vol. 1, no. 1, from the New York State Archives collection.)

Carol Reid

Forster* + Foster* (for Foster* or Forster*)

A segment on ABC's 20/20 recently had me wondering what some folks think foster care is actually for—in addition to whom mind-bending, mood-altering prescription drugs are supposed to be for. It seems that many children in foster care are being given "powerful psychotropic drugs" for no apparent reason other than the fact that it's cheaper than therapy. But being distressed over the loss of one's parents or one's home does not constitute mental or emotional illness per se. Traumatic though such things are, they shouldn't really require more than a modicum of medication, along with some counseling and, dare I say love, in order to help most kids deal. According to research conducted by 20/20, these kids are up to 13 times more likely than other children to be prescribed such drugs; "hundreds" of them are on five or more of them at once. One tiny interviewee said the drugs made her "sleepy in the day," while others displayed symptoms that were much more disturbing. Most expressed insight and outrage far beyond their years and spoke feelingly about how happy and "free" they became once they were finally taken off their meds. We found 84 cases of today's typo in OhioLINK and 974 in WorldCat. You'll probably find some in your own catalog as well. Not all of these cases will need correction, of course, but please deal appropriately with those that do.

(Krishna with his foster mother, Yasoda, painted as a Keralite mother and child, 1901, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Pwer* (for Power*)

I've blogged about the Powerpuff Girls and the power of squirrels, but never both together in the same posting. The other night I caught an episode of PPG called "Stray Bullet" in which Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup discover a baby squirrel who's been mauled by a mean old owl and then take it home to nurse it back to health. He/she (they can't decide whether to name the patient Lady Josephine, Miss Fluffy, or Bruce) soon recovers and, in fact, develops superpowers of its own, thanks to Bubbles slipping it a bit of Chemical X. The squirrel is then deemed an honorary Powerpuff Girl and given the "B-name" Bullet. But here's the cool thing: it's a red squirrel, despite the fact that the story takes place in "Townsville, U.S.A." (In some cultures, redheads are thought to have supernatural powers, yet the beleaguered red squirrels in Europe seem to be losing the battle.) Later the Powerpuff Girls watch a TV documentary about the "clever and endearing forest squirrel." (The squirrel is gray.) "A highly intelligent creature, known for its charm and resourcefulness, the common North American tree squirrel is a natural acrobat..." The girls object: "That's nothing! Bullet can jump miles further than that! Of course she can! Bullet can fly, silly! Bullet's the best super-squirrel in the whole wide world! No, Bullet's the best any kind of squirrel in the whole wide world! No, Bullet's the best any kind of animal in the whole wide world..." Bring your own superpowers to bear on our typo of the day, which was was found nine times in OhioLINK (all legitimate) and 272 times in WorldCat (a mixed bag).

("Cycling Squirrels? Someone has adapted the warning sign for the West Yorkshire Cycleway, except that red squirrels no longer occur in this area." February 17, 1991, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Dewlling* (for Dwelling*)

Fairies drink dew. But you knew that, right? And they dwell under toadstools and in various other spots throughout the garden. The herb Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla) collects the morning dew, which when dropped into the eyes is said to enable one to see fairies. Many people believe in fairies, especially those who dwell in the United Kingdom, and this was particularly true in 1917, when two teenage cousins from Cottingley, England, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, managed to convince quite a few folks that they had not only seen, but photographed, fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famously defended the photographs as genuine and spent years promoting them to the public. The truth is, they were genuine photos, but they were fake fairies. In the early 1980s, the elderly cousins confessed their longstanding deception (the "fairies" were paper dolls hung from branches), although they disagreed about the nature of the fifth picture and jointly maintained that, in any case, they still saw them. I wouldn't dwell on this too much (or maybe I would), but in the meantime, we found three of these typos hiding in plain sight in OhioLINK, and 40 in WorldCat.

(Frances Griffiths with fairies, taken in 1917, first published in 1920 in The Strand Magazine, from Wikipedia.)

Carol Reid

Multp* (for Multiple, etc.)

Our typo of the day is almost always a multiple one. But it's not always easy to tell how many cases we will find, or what the cause for the trouble might have been. In the recent book Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan, we learn that the famous albeit anonymous "Sybil" (Shirley Mason) never had 16 separate personalities at all. Rather, she was part of a folie à trois, comprising her therapist, the author who made her story a bestseller, and herself. Essentially, though, she was a victim of rogue psychiatry and professional aggrandizement. Nathan is the journalist who publicized false sex-abuse cases like McMartin in the Village Voice. She also coauthored, with Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence in 1995, about the extended hysteria (encompassing everything from "ritual abuse" in daycare centers to "repressed memories" in therapists' offices) that swept the nation during the 1980s. There were four instances of Multp* in OhioLINK and 183 in WorldCat. Take a look at what's inside your catalog today and see what typos you can expose.

(Cover of Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan.)

Carol Reid

Disese*, Diseas (for Disease, etc.)

'Tis the season for diseases. At least, those of the sore throat, drippy nose, stuffed head, hacking cough kind. I've caught a cold. And, though it's nice to have an excuse to lie on the couch all day and read the new library book, while being brought comfort snacks and cups of herbal tea now and again, it's really no fun being sick. However, the home-remedy "cure for the common cold" self-tinkering is always instructive. This time I'm trying oranges and lemons, garlic and honey, elderberry syrup, and some beautiful purple homeopathic lozenges. I'm feeling under the weather today. It's been raining all afternoon. Time to get back to my book now, though. I'm afraid I'll be feeling much better in the morning. If you feel up to it, get back to work checking for our two typos today. Disese* was found 21 times in OhioLINK and 242 times in WorldCat, while Diseas turned up seven times and 262 times respectively. (I noted some, however, with a "sic" in tow and others that may have been older spelling variants).

(Color lithograph advertising poster: "Dr. D. Jayne's Tonic Vermifuge. A Sure Remedy for Worms. The Best Tonic for Young and Old. The Cure for C[ough]s, Colds, Asthma, or any Lung or Throat Disease, is Dr. D. Jayne's Expectorant." Captioned: "The Child Moses." From Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Alic + Alice (for Alice)

Today is the birthday of Calvin Trillin, who Wikipedia describes as an "American journalist, humorist, food writer, poet, memoirist, and novelist." Trillin was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1935. He attended Yale University and eventually landed jobs in New York City at Time magazine and The New Yorker, where be became a staff writer in 1963. Trillin pens a long-running politically inspired weekly poem for The Nation called "Deadline Poet." Although he has covered some "hard news" over the course of his career, he has a penchant for two topics in particular: food and his late wife, Alice. The book Alice, Let's Eat, published in 1973, pretty much sums up his worldview. Calvin Trillin married the writer and educator Alice Stewart in 1965 and together they had two daughters, whom they brought up in Greenwich Village, where Trillin still resides. Alice Trillin died on September 11, 2001 and her doting husband wrote about her one last time in The New Yorker, March 27, 2006, in an essay entitled "Alice, Off the Page." There were seven cases of Alic + Alice in OhioLINK today and 65 in WorldCat.

(American writer and humorist Calvin Trillin at a discussion at Dartmouth College, February 2, 2oll, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Prsent* (for Present*)

At my family's Thanksgiving celebration over the weekend, my sister handed me a gift bag, an "early Christmas present," she said, "that just can't wait." It was a coffee cup with a picture of Santa Claus on it and the words "Marry Christmas." A typo mug for the typo blog! (As Pee-wee Herman, undoubtedly a big fan of the present-giving holiday, might say: "If you love it so much, why don't you marry it?") When I got home later that night and turned on the TV, I immediately heard someone say, "I'm not the marryin' kind..." Well, me neither, I guess, but I'm certainly glad someone was. This present is priceless. And now I can present it to all of you. Prsent* (for present*) turns up 88 times in OhioLINK and "too many records found for your search" in WorldCat. Here's hoping that those numbers presently go down like a misspelled mug of Christmas grog.

(Mug shot.)

Carol Reid

Continum* (for Continuum*)

Continuum is one of a relatively small group of words that contain two U's in a row. Many of these have Latin roots; some are Hawaiian. There is, of course, the familiar vacuum, along with the more obscure, and fun to use, ahuula (feather cloak or cape made of minute red or yellow bird feathers, trimmed with black or green feathers, worn in Hawaiia by high chiefs and kings); squush (which the Scrabble dictionary claims is a synonym for squash, and the derivative squushy); and suum (a term imitative of the sound of the wind, used by Shakespeare). Extra credit goes to muumuu (a loose-fitting dress of Hawaiian origin, much favored by Mama Cass) and zuuzuu (candy or confectioneries sold to prisoners from vending machines) for having TWO sets of double U's in each word. There were 14 cases of Continum* in OhioLINK and 470 in WorldCat. Hey, youse guys, do you think you could check your own catalogs for the Case of the Missing U today? (Notice that I'm being a suaviloquus—a term meaning "he who speaks rhetorically"—when I ask that.)

("Continuum" sculpture, 2005, by Michael Snape at Docklands, Victoria-Melbourne, Australia, March 31, 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid