Intergrat* (for Integrat*)

Steve Carrell announced the other day that he plans to leave The Office next May when his contract is up. Hopefully, this is just a Michael Scott-like ruse to negotiate more money, although he says (cheating politician-wise) that it's in order to spend more time with his family. In any case, it's hard to imagine the show going on without him. (That's what she said.) One of my favorite episodes of The Office is called "Diversity Day." Internal politics and Michael's own interpretation of what that means causes him to organize an interactive game in which the employees must greet each other as if each belonged to an ethnic group indicated by signs stuck to their foreheads. (Pam: "Um ... I like your food?") It's a scathingly funny satire of political correctness and forced integration and points up the paradox involved in hamhandedly celebrating/stereotyping our differences. Although it's rarely used anymore, grat is apparently the past tense of greet. We greeted a whopping 156 cases of Intergrat* in OhioLINK, so after you've had your coffee and grat all your coworkers, get busy on those typos and have a great day at The Office!

(Steve Carrell at the 82nd Academy Awards at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, California, March 7, 2010. Photo by Robyn Beck, courtesy ofAFP/Getty Images.)

Carol Reid

Edted (for Edited)

"It all started at a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, California," Ted Baxter of the Mary Tyler Moore Show would ponderously intone, whenever he could wangle a captive audience, which was usually at the annual "Teddy Awards." The thoroughly insufferable, but somehow still lovable, TV news announcer was played by Ted Knight, who got his start at a radio (and TV) station in Albany, New York (WROW) in 1955. Ted Baxter was the bronzed bane of his boss's existence; in real life, though, Ted Knight and Ed Asner were good friends, despite their political differences (Asner was a liberal activist and Knight was a social conservative). Ted Knight passed away in 1986. (Betty White, at 88, is still kicking, as are the rest of the MTM cast members. The iconic sitcom itself will live on in our hearts forever.) We found 15 instances of Edted, which need to be edited, in the OhioLINK database.

(Screenshot of Sue Ann Nivens and Ted Baxter, courtesy of Flickr.)

Carol Reid

Maintenence, Mantenance (for Maintenance)

High maintenance is not usually considered a good thing in a woman. But a good maintenance man (who, of course, can sometimes be a woman) is often hard to find. These guys may move too quickly, or too slowly, cost too much, or not show up at all. (Maintenence shows up 16 times in OhioLINK, and Mantenance three.) Most maintenance workers are lovely and competent savers of the day, however—and some of them are pure genius. In 1974, Robert Pirsig wrote and sold over four million copies of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which the press called "the most widely read philosophy book, ever." Pirsig cautioned readers: "It should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either."

(Picture of sign posted to Flickr and prompting the comment: "Couldn't we all use one! I hired a yard man and he avoids me just like my husband does when the hedges need to be trimmed.")

Carol Reid

Boosk (for Books)

A boosk, says Urban Dictionary, is someone who "steals your answers during a standardized testing session." Hmm. I'm not quite sure where they get this stuff, but let's go with it for now. A surprising 95% of students admit to some form of cheating, according to a survey by Rutgers University, and 58% to plagiarism—both of which are facilitated by the Internet. However, technology also makes these things easier to spot, with all sorts of software available to teachers and administrators. It kind of makes you pine for the good old school days when the quickest way to catch a thief was simply to look around for the nearest boosk. We found seven examples of today's typo in OhioLINK, all of them in publication fields. Although the 260 is a transcribed field, it's fairly safe to assume such typos were introduced by the cataloger. However, if you've got the time and don't want to cheat at this, even a little bit, you should go to the shelf and take a look at the publisher imprint on the boosk—er, books—in question.

("Illustration for Cheating" by Hariadhi, 2007, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Excution*, etc. (for Execution*)

On June 24, 2004, the death penalty, or "capital punishment," was ruled to be unconstitutional in New York State. Wikipedia tells us that "the term capital originates from Latin capitalis, literally 'regarding the head.' Hence, a capital crime was originally one punished by the severing of the head." Fashions fluctuate in the world of execution. From head severing to hanging, electrocution to "lethal injection"—even shooting is making a comeback. However, as Dorothy Parker once pointed out, in a somewhat different context: "Razors pain you, rivers are damp, acids stain you, and drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful, nooses give, gas smells awful ... you might as well live." Excution* lives six times in the OhioLINK database. The typo Executin turns up twice and Exeution* only once, but you know what they say, three strikes and you're in.

(Photograph of "Old Sparky," the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, originally bearing the watermark: "Courtesy NYS Department of Correctional Services.")

Carol Reid

Fith (for Fifth)

Stuart Sutcliffe, who's sometimes referred to as the "Fifth Beatle," was born seventy years ago today in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the original bass player for the Beatles, whose shifting name he and John Lennon had contrived in a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. (In addition to "Beetles," they also tried spelling it "Beatals," which puts me in mind a little of the hilarious Powerpuff Girls episode "Meet the Beat Alls"). Sutcliffe died of a brain hemorrhage in 1962, after having been with the band for only fifteen months. Had he lived, however, the "Lost Beatle" would likely be better known for his paintings than his music. While performing with the Beatles in Germany, Sutcliffe met photographer Astrid Kirchherr, to whom he later became engaged. He quit the Liverpool band in 1961 to enroll in the Hamburg College of Art, where he studied under future pop avatar Eduardo Paolozzi. Sutcliffe had already garnered a solid reputation as an artist when he was suddenly lost to the world at the tender age of 22. Today's typo (Fith for fifth) seems to have also lost one of its original five members. It was found 13 times in OhioLINK.

(Portrait of Stuart Sutcliffe from the Web.)

Carol Reid

Laywer* (for Lawyer*)

In the classic 1949 romantic comedy Adam's Rib, married lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner really lay into each other as opposing counsel in the sensational trial of a woman charged with shooting her faithless layabout of a husband. Whether you like your arguments in the courtroom or the bedroom, you'll find plenty to enjoy in this four-star Hepburn-Tracy vehicle. Amanda alleges that turnabout is fair play and that her client ought not to be judged more harshly than a wronged husband would be. Adam's response is that his distaff side is simply flouting the law, and being unattractively uppity to boot. Ironically, the battling Bonners are not above a little domestic violence of their own, with Adam whacking his wife's behind a bit too meaningly during a massage ("I know a slap from a slug!" she tells him) and later brandishing a rather realistic-looking licorice gun. Fortunately, it's all in the name of good fun and forties-style feminism. Laywer* (for lawyer*) turns up 13 times in OhioLINK.

(Cropped screenshot of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn from the trailer for Adam's Rib, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid