Shoppp*, Shoping, Shoper* (for Shop, etc.)

"Shop till you drop" is the rallying cry of many Americans, especially on the day after Thanksgiving, also known as "Black Friday," when retailers hope their customers will put them "in the black." (In fact, the phrase got its start in Philadelphia and was originally a reference to the heavy traffic on that day.) Shoppp* gets three hits in OhioLINK and Shoping and Shoper* get two apiece. Our picture shows a woman from the "black bourgeoisie" inquiring of a shopkeeper: "Have you any flesh-coloured silk stockings, young man?" Wikimedia points out that the "caricature is not really racist in itself—and could even be considered to be subtly anti-racist in pointing out the relative meaning of the term 'flesh-colored'—but much of the humor which white Americans of 1829 would have perceived in it would have arisen from the racist preconceptions which they held." Today is Black Friday at TotDfL. Three typos for the price of one.

("Life in Philadelphia," from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Recipie, Recipies (for Recipe, Recipes)

Next to the bird, the stuffing, and the cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie is probably the dish most suggestive of Thanksgiving. OhioLINK contains a single serving of Recipie and 16 more of Recipies (two with"sic"), making it a moderate to high probability typo. (Don't truncate this turkey or else you'll pick up too many hits for words like recipient. Remember, 'tis better to give than to receive.) My great-aunt used to bake pies all year round and, before passing on, passed her pumpkin pie "secret" on to my sister, who recreated it for the family this year. Her recipe was actually Mamie Eisenhower's, whose trick was to bake the empty pie shell in the oven while cooking the filling in a double boiler. At some point, you add gelatin and fold in some egg whites to firm it up, then pour it into the shell and chill. Lots of people liked Ike and I'm sure that Ike liked the First Lady's recipe for White House Pumpkin Chiffon Pie. Thanks, Mamie!

Carol Reid

Holday (for Holiday)

"Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice," says Dave Barry. Looking at the map that we loaded for this blog, I see that many of our readers are from Western Europe, so I will explain that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. That is one of our most important holidays, so nearly everything is closed except for restaurants and gas stations. In spite of that, my typographical colleague Carol Reid has volunteered to add a blog entry tomorrow while our family is overdoing it with turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. On to the matter at hand. Holday is a bonus word that is not on the list yet. Because it had four hits in OhioLINK, it will find itself on the low probability section of Typographical Errors in Library Databases.

We live on Long Island, so we could take a train and see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but most years we don't. The last year that we did produced the photograph that has been used today - a shot of a very young man reacting to the giant balloon moving past him. The original can be seen at http://www.pbase.com/terryballard/image/52702092 .

Congresional (for Congressional)

"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees," according to Boris Marshalov. With the final races still being decided, Congress was on our minds this morning. Congresional is on the C, or moderate probability section of Typographical Errors in Library Databases at http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard/typoscomplete.html , meaning that the error was found between 8 and 15 times in OhioLINK at the time of its discovery. The more telling number is 103 - the count for Congresional in WorldCat. This blog has already dealt with Congesssional, and we suspect that both typos are simply the result of sloppy typing and proofreading.

Today's photo of the Capitol Dome from the area of the National Museum of the American Indian. The original can be seen at http://www.pbase.com/terryballard/image/34133807

Literaure (for Literature)

"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read” according to Oscar Wilde. Literaure fits most of the classic patterns of an opac typo in that it has a missing letter at the end of a long, familiar word. However, we find it surprisingly plentiful for a typo that does not look right on even a casual inspection. It is found on the 'B,' or High Probability section of Typographical Errors in Library Databases, meaning that it was present between 16 and 99 times in OhioLINK at the time of its discovery. We found more than 50 when we looked today, but some of those appeared to be connected to legitimate non-English words. There were only 3 cases of Literaure in the catalog of Arizona State University today (My alma mater - Class of 1968 English Major), but one of those was in a subject heading.

Today's image shows Tintern Abbey in Southern Wales - made famous in a poem by Wordsworth.

The original photograph from the 1970's was digitized and then rendered as a painting in Photoshop. The original can be seen at http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/libraries/tballard/literature.html

Everbody* (for Everybody*)

The Eveready Bunny just keeps on going, and I have a feeling that Everbody* (showing up 61 times in OhioLINK) will go on forever as well. So energize yourself and stick a Y in that typo whenever you can. The Energizer Bunny is apparently a "parody" of the Duracell Bunny, which debuted in Europe and has never been seen this side of the pond, due to Eveready's copping the North American trademark rights to "battery bunnies." And just to make today's typo a bit more topical, it seems that George Bush the Elder once compared Bill Clinton to the Energizer Bunny (a term which had come to mean anything that runs endlessly) during a campaign speech he gave in 1992. His boy Dubya has also shown great stamina when it comes to running for office, but even a hopped-up wabbit without an energy policy has gotta give it up sometime.

(In one of the few times that the Energizer Bunny is actually shown standing still, here he is tied down on the streets of New York, prior to the 2006 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Innonce*, etc. (for Innocence, etc.)

Most cases involving the innocent accused are ones with either too much "evidence" included or not enough. OhioLINK reveals five instances of Innonce* and one each of Innocn* and Inonc*. On the theory that while one N here is too few, three are too many, we also got 15 hits for another of those triple-letter offenders: Innn*. (Three strikes and you're out.) Among those found were misspellings for the words innovation, interesting, inn, inner, inner-city, and innerness. The words innocence and innocent, however, were found not guilty of this error.

(Kelly Michaels, who served five years of a 47-year prison sentence due to false and fantastic accusations of satanic child abuse at the Wee Care Day Nursery in Maplewood, New Jersey, before being exonerated in 1993.)

Carol Reid