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

Nabakov*, Nobokov* (for Nabokov*)

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the fin de siecle, on or about April 22, 1899. The true date of his birth is somewhat debatable due to a "misunderstanding [of] the relationship between the Julian and Gregorian calendars." According to Wikipedia: "In his memoirs Speak, Memory, Nabokov indicates that 22 April was the correct date, but that he nevertheless preferred to celebrate his birthday 'with diminishing pomp' on 23 April. As he happily pointed out on several occasions during interviews, this meant he also shared a birthday with William Shakespeare and Shirley Temple..." That offhand reference to "America's Sweetheart" might be regarded as a bit ill-advised, however, since I'm sure there are those who actually consider the author of Lolita to have been something of a pedophile himself. At any rate, given the fact that I've written about him, or at least mentioned him in passing, on five separate occasions here, one could certainly be forgiven for balking at the prospect of yet another blog entry on this beloved/ beleaguered artist: "Nabokov? ... No, back off!" Nabakov* was found four times in OhioLink, and 111 times in WorldCat, with Nobokov* six times in the former, and 69 times in the latter.

(Monument of Vladimir Nabokov in Montreux, December 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Pronograph* (for Pornography)

Marie Barone on "Everybody Loves Raymond" once asked her son if the DVD player his wife had gotten him for Christmas was a "pornography machine." Which isn't too far off the mark for some people, although you're unlikely to see them marketed as "pornographs" anytime soon. Pronograph* appears in OhioLINK five times (with WorldCat revealing ten cases of Pronography and three of Pronographic), but with email this sort of thing is apt to be intentional, since many office apps are tricked out with crude filters that can't distinguish between actual porn and the word "porn." Another word my own system can't abide is "Lolita." This makes it difficult to discuss the debate over porn filters in libraries—or the Nabokov classic and its two film adaptations, all of which have been the targets of censorship. Purposeful misspelling of these words is an effective workaround. (Former A.G. and antiporn guy John Ashcroft standing in front of the "Spirit of Justice," which he preferred to be hidden by a curtain, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Litarary, Litarature (for Literary, Literature)

Many movie actors and directors are subjects of print biographies, both authorized and unauthorized, and some of them even highly regarded autobiographies, but very few can lay claim to having been the catalyst for a classic work of literature. Charlie Chaplin married Lita Grey in 1924, when Grey was only 16 years old and pregnant. The marriage was at once a tiresome domestic drama and a tawdry affair. It also came dangerously close to becoming a criminal matter. Chaplin went on to play the role of bridegroom three more times and Lita (who had twenty years on him) tied the knot thrice more herself. She wrote two autobiographies, the first one mainly comprising "exaggeration and fabrication" (allegedly on the part of her co-author, Morton Cooper) and the second one (published in 1998, three years after her death) apparently more truthful. Her marriage to Chaplin is considered by his biographer, Joyce Milton, to have been the inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's literary masterpiece Lolita, published in 1955. We found three cases of Litarary in the OhioLINK database today, and four of Litarature.

(Publicity photo of Lita Grey in 1925, from Famous Film Folk, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Facsmile* (for Facsimile*)

Most people probably think emoticons were invented in the 1980s. And it's true that, like a digital-age Samuel F. B. Morse, Scott Fahlman sent the first emoticon embedded in a computer message on Sept. 19, 1982. But the typographical smiley (frowny. . .) faces you see here were actually introduced to the public nearly a century before that, in the satirical weekly Puck, on March 30, 1881. Furthermore, it seems that emoticons (also called "snigger points" by Ambrose Bierce; possibly discovered in a speech by Abraham Lincoln; turning up in 1940s sci-fi fiction, teletype in the 1970s, and ubiquitous "happy face" schlock; even recommended by Vladimir Nabokov!) have been making periodic appearances ever since. Facsmile* appears 16 times in OhioLINK (23 if truncated to Facsm*) and copies of today's typo will likely be found in your catalog as well. In any case, some sort of fake smile or another is sure to be showing up somewhere soon.

(Puckish emoticons from Wikimedia Commons.)

<:^) Carol Reid (^:>

Outsand* (for Outstand*)

With regard to working in the garden, I might not exactly be outstanding in my field. I do sometimes feel, though, as if I'm being outsanded in it. I live near a unique ecosystem known as the Albany Pine Bush, whose habitat is home to the Karner blue butterfly (discovered and named by the Lolita-conceiving lepidopterist, Vladimir Nabokov) and its favorite snack, the attractive pink and purple lupine, a lovely flower often found thriving amid rocks and pebbles along the seashore. Certain plants do better in a clay soil, while others plainly prefer sand. And there's no doubt about it: while getting to my community garden is literally a walk in the park, my actual plot there is like a day at the beach. I have a little booklet at home called Gardening in Sandy Soil by C. L. Fornari. It suggests over eighty different ground covers, herbs, and flowers—including English ivy, heather, thyme, cosmos, baby's breath, morning-glory, black-eyed Susan, creeping zinnia, purple coneflower, globe thistle, evening primrose, daylily, cinquefoil, golden rod, and spiderwort—all of which will allow you to take full advantage of the benefits (there are some) to be found in sandy soil. We dug up one sample of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 40 in WorldCat.

(Albany Pine Bush in Albany, New York, 20 June 2010, by UpstateNYer, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Any Rand (for Ayn Rand)

Ayn Rand, primarily known for the novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, once wrote a play called Woman on Trial. It opened in Los Angeles in 1934, and was produced on Broadway the following year under the title Night of January 16th. Inspired by the death of Ivar Kreugar, the so-called "Match King," Ayn Rand's play concerns a woman accused of murdering her lover; selected audience members play the jury, thus nightly rewriting the ending. There's a lot to be said about Ayn Rand, her "conservative" politics, her "objectivist" philosophy, and her internal contradictions, much more than can really be discussed at any length here. But I loved this random fact gleaned from the Wikipedia article about her: "Her closest friend was Vladimir Nabokov's younger sister, Olga." Though the two Russian writers apparently didn't know each other, it looks as if their paths may have crossed in childhood, in addition to later on when Atlas Shrugged and Lolita were both on the New York Times bestseller list. There were four examples of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 23 in WorldCat. Once again, you may get a few false positives with this search (e.g., "It does not reflect any RAND research"), but the vast majority should prove to be typos for Rand's first name—which is to say, her assumed name: her given name was Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum. It's thought that Ayn was based on the Finnish name Aino or perhaps the Hebrew word עין (ayin, meaning "eye"). It might be noted that the RAND Corporation was not named for the first lady of libertarianism; it is an acronym for "Research ANd Development." I'll leave you with one of the best and wittiest arguments for the serial comma, not to mention Rand's own reputation, taken from the "apocryphal book dedication" quoted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden: To my parents, Ayn Rand and God. Dedicate your typo searching time to all your "Ayn Rand" records today and make sure there aren't any spelled Any.

(Portrait of Ayn Rand, February 2, 1905–March 6, 1982, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid