Exib* (for Exhibit, etc.)

The ibex is not a tiny new Apple product, thank God, but rather a type of mountain goat found in Africa and parts of Eurasia. Frankly, it would go great in an exhibit. The male grows these long, curved, fantastic-looking horns and wears a snazzy little goatee (as goats are wont to do). I wouldn't exactly call him an exhibitionist, but you can judge for yourself. Douglas Florian's book Mammalabilia, which was awarded the 2000 Claudia Lewis Poetry Award from the Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education, includes the following Ogden-Nash-like ditty:

The daring ibex risk their necks
On scary airy mountain treks.
Each one must climb with skill complex
Or else become an ex-ibex.

There are 48 examples of Exib* in OhioLINK (the vast majority of which look like legitimate typos), making it "high probability" on the Ballard list.

("Ibex shapes—A summer in high Asia—1899" from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Guild*, Gild* (for Gild*, Guild*)

A guild is a trade union. To gild is to cover with a thin layer of gold. A search on Guild* + Gild* gets 114 hits in OhioLINK: Not all of them are typos, but quite a few are. Unfortunately for our purposes, gild is an alternate spelling for guild (although the reverse is not the case). Gilding is what librarians or bookbinders do when they emboss gold letters on the spine of a book. This word often turns up in my own workplace as guilding, but whenever it does, I try and let my colleagues know that U is just gilding the lily.

(Gilded Flicker in flight, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Platimum, etc. (for Platinum)

On Christmas morning, my boyfriend and I were playing holiday tunes on YouTube when I decided to look up "Santa Baby" by Eartha Kitt. As it began to play, I asked him if he knew who she was and he seemed unsure, but replied, "Didn't she die recently?" I said, no, I'm certain I would have heard something if she had, adding that she would probably be one of those people who lives well into their 90's, if not past 100. So it was quite the strange and sad coincidence to learn Friday that Eartha Kitt had indeed passed away on Christmas. In the song for which she is probably best known (along with her role as Catwoman in the Batman TV series), she purrs: "Santa cutie, there's one thing I really do need, the deed, to a platinum mine, Santa cutie, and hurry down the chimney tonight..." This song appears on an album entitled Platinum & Gold Collection. We dug up two cases of Platimum in OhioLINK and one each of Platimun and Paltinum. Eartha Kitt, now mum, leaves behind a valuable legacy, a rich mine of sex and song, and will be sorely missed by fans all over the world—including, I feel quite sure, Santa Baby himself.

(Portrait of Eartha Kitt by Carl Van Vechten, 1952, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Kahn, Khan (for Khan, Kahn)

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree..." wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge early one morning before being inopportunely interrupted by a knock at his door. By the time he was able to return to the memory of what he later termed "a vision in a dream ... a fragment," a good deal of it had already slipped away, just like that "sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice." It's believed this vivid and somewhat surreal fantasy was fueled by opium, but critics differ on the deeper meaning of the poem itself, written sometime between 1797 and 1816. There are six cases of Kubla Kahn in OhioLINK, making it a "low probability" typo on the Ballard list, but it's a useful object lesson here. The surname Kahn is a common one in the Judeo-Christian community; Khan is frequently found too, mostly among Muslims. Kahn + Khan returns 81 records, the vast majority of which appear to contain typos. Recently I memorized the poem Kubla Khan, as recommended by the book Committed to Memory, and especially enjoyed the line "As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing" (it tends to put me in mind of David Letterman's production company World Wide Pants) and, less facetiously, the final stanza, which reads:

Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

(Portrait of Coleridge, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Chrsitmas, etc. (for Christmas)

Well, don't just sit there. It's Christmas. Ian Fairclough searched high and low and found the presents—er, presence—of quite a few typos today. Let's see, in descending order (that is, with increasing truncation), we get Chrsitmas three times, Chrsitm* four times, Chrsit* 52 times, Chrsi* 54 times, and Chrs* a whopping 108 times, involving related words like Christian and Christianity. No matter how many times you say it, or how many ways there are to spell it, the spirit of Christmas is still beyond words. As my grandmother used to softly sing in German: "Stille Nacht, Heil'ge Nacht, Alles schläft, einsam wacht..." Here is to all of you calm and bright catalogers, and a merry Christmas from all of us at Typo of the Day for Librarians!

("Old Father Christmas in a New Character," looking down and out in an 1875 edition of the Canadian Illustrated News, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Christms (for Christmas)

In 1823 a poetic ms. entitled A Visit from St. Nicholas (more commonly called Twas the Night Before Christmas) was published anonymously in the Troy, New York, Sentinel, just over the river and through the woods from here. It was long assumed to have been the work of Clement Clarke Moore, who lived in New York City and taught Greek and Oriental literature at Columbia College. He was also made professor of Biblical learning at the General Theological Seminary, for which he donated the land. I'm not quite sure why he was thought to be the author of this poem—he just was. But if you really must know, the story got started by a Charles Fenno Hoffman in 1837 and soon after that A Visit from St. Nicholas was published under Clement Moore's name. In 1860 its origins were challenged by the Livingston family, and in 2002 the Britannica and Columbia encyclopedias coolly informed us: "Recent computer-aided scholarship has cast considerable doubt on Moore's authorship of the poem ... In 2000 it was determined that the poem was probably the work of Henry Livingston, Jr." It's sort of like being told there's no Santa Claus. But thanks, Henry. And you too, Clement. And you too, Mr. and Ms. Claus. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! (Oh, and there are six cases of Christms in OhioLINK.)

(Twas the Night Before Christmas, by Clement Moore, with pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith, 1912.)

Carol Reid

Scatalog* (for Scatology, etc.)

The New Yorker once reported that the funniest joke in the world* was the following one: What's brown and sticky? (Answer: A stick!) What makes this joke so utterly perfect, it seems, is that it contains two K's (K is apparently a very funny letter), it deals in wordplay, and it appears to be scatological in nature (and then upends that expectation). There are 11 cases of Scatalog* in OhioLINK, probably because people are fastening onto the "uh" sound and forgetting about the root word: scatology. Notably, a few of these are for titles containing the word scatalogue, which may be an intentional neologism rather than an actual misspelling. (The Urban Dictionary defines scatalogue as "a piece of media focused on a topic so awful, that only equally awful people of that grouping will buy it" or "a catalogue featuring items that no-one in their right minds would buy, lest they are arrested by the Taste Police.") The stick took a break from poking someone's eye out this year in order to be inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame (where it joined 2005's cardboard box and a slew of rather more commercial playthings). Sticks are classic, biodegradable, and free (they literally grow on trees!) and, besides, giving one for Christmas would be a good way to stick it to the one who always cheaps out on your gift.

*Well, perhaps not exactly, but it was a very popular contender in an online "global humor study."

(Pic of a stick at the THoF induction ceremony, from BoingBoing.)

Carol Reid