Enginne* (for Engine*, Engineer*)

The Little Engine that could probably couldn't had he been drinking that day. And it's probably best if the engineers stay sober as well. There's even a push right now to ban alcohol consumption on the part of some European train travelers. But rather than getting drunk in order to watch the passing scenery, how much better it would be to watch the intoxicating Ramesh Meyyappan chew up the scenery (in a good way) in one of his highly acclaimed performances in cities all over the world. Meyyappan is a Glasgow-based Singaporean and "multi-faceted theatre practitioner who creates performances using an eclectic mix of visual and physical theatre styles." His 2007 production Gin & Tonic & Passing Trains is based on Charles Dickens’ classic ghost story "The Signalman" and garnered the following review from Singapore's The Flying Inkpot: "Sublime storytelling, pure and simple. Meyyappan out-Dickenses Dickens... Cheeky, magical, sickening." We found 39 cases of Enginne* in OhioLINK and 870 in WorldCat.

(Meyyappan in Gin & Tonic & Passing Trains, from the artist's website.)

Carol Reid

Repot, Repots, Repoter*, Repoting (Report, Reports, Reporter*, Reporting)

What goes around comes around, and that would appear to apply to both "bogarting the joint" as well as the overall consideration of cannabis as medicine. Medical marijuana is currently legal in 16 states, as well as up in Canada, where our neighbors to the north have been able to freely smoke pot (with a note from their doc) for going on several years now. The old-fashioned "fluid extract" shown to the left is described on the label as an "antispasmodic, sedative, and narcotic." It's also 80% alcohol. I recently heard of a friend of a friend who often enjoys a homemade version of this elixir, but I'd never heard of a major drug company offering such a thing to its customers. Perhaps Eli Lilly should quit manufacturing questionable "antidepressants" such as Prozac and go back to this tried and true tincture made from the world's most well-known mood-elevating plant. There were reports of today's typos occurring a total of 15 times in OhioLINK (and 267, 63, 23, and 16 times apiece in WorldCat). Although there seemed to be some false "hits" among them, it's a typo of pretty "high" probability.

(Label of an Eli Lilly Cannabis Fluid extract bottle, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Offf* (for Office*, Official*, etc.)

A scrappy stray puppy dog, who would come to be known as Owney, wandered into a downtown Albany post office one dark and stormy night in the winter of 1888, or so the story goes. And the story certainly does go. Owney was discovered by some postal employees sleeping on a canvas mail bag and appeared to be quite satisfied with the accommodations. He started stowing away on mail trains, and before long became the "unofficial mascot" of postal workers throughout the country. They adorned him with various "tags, tokens, trinkets, and medals" to commemorate his travels, which in 1895 took him all the way around the world. Although fully a dozen (!) books have been written about him so far, the U.S. Postal Service is making it that much more official today by releasing a postage stamp in Owney's honor. The occasion is being celebrated here in a "day of entertainment with storytellers, Owney videos and Dog Star sightings in the Henry Hudson Planetarium, music by the Owney String Band, an exhibit by the Mohawk & Hudson Humane Society, and a guided walking tour to the former downtown post office that Owney called home." An official count of our typo for the day comes in at 38 in OhioLINK and 524 in WorldCat.

(Photo of Owney in 1897, from the Smithsonian Institution, and Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Homesex* (for Homosex*)

Homosexual behavior used to be considered rather outré and usually something you had to leave home in order to engage in. But with the legalization of gay marriage, we've come a long way toward making it as commonplace and pedestrian as the "domestic bliss" that most heteros endure, I mean enjoy. On Sunday, hundreds of gay and lesbian couples were married in New York City after the passage of the Marriage Equality Act on June 24. This made New York the sixth and largest state in the union to legalize the tying of the gay knot. Most same-sexers present a united front in the fight for "marriage equality," but, just like with straight folks, there are bound to be a few ideological holdouts—such as Larry Kramer and Fran Lebowitz. There were three examples of Homesex* in OhioLINK and 44 in WorldCat.

(Marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, June 16, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Martime (for Maritime)

The burning and sinking of the General Slocum, which killed 1,021 people from New York City's Little Germany neighborhood, was the deadliest maritime disaster (unrelated to war) in U.S. history. And, prior to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the biggest one (in terms of lives that were lost) to ever befall that city. It's been compared to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, but the story of the General Slocum is not nearly as well known. (The former involved exploited immigrant factory workers who had been agitating for labor reforms; and, as Adella Wotherspoon, formerly Adele Liebenow, the youngest survivor of the General Slocum inferno, would later point out: "The Titanic had a great many famous people on it. This was just a family picnic.") It happened on June 15, 1904. The casualties were mainly women and children, all of whom had climbed on board for the 17th annual Sunday school picnic of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church. They were headed to Long Island on the East River when the paddlewheeler caught on fire, a catastrophe for which the operators were scandalously unprepared. Lifeboats had been wired to the deck and life preservers (illegally weighted to meet certain standards) had virtually turned to dust from disuse. The captain, William H. Van Schaick, made some very poor decisions in the heat of the moment, including ignoring a young boy's cry of alarm for the crucial first ten minutes, then steering the steamboat away from the shore in order, he said, to keep the fire from spreading to nearby buildings and oil tanks. He was later found guilty of criminal negligance (failing to conduct fire drills and maintain fire extinguishers) and served three and a half years of a ten-year sentence in Sing Sing. (He was paroled and then pardoned by President Taft.) There were 21 hits on Martime in OhioLINK and 404 in WorldCat.

(Adele Liebenow, 18 months old, at the dedication of the memorial to the victims of the General Slocum disaster, from the New York Historical Society and Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Robins + Robbins (for Robbins or Robins)

Baskin-Robbins has 31 flavors* and author Tom Robbins has nine novels (plus numerous essays, short stories, and a 2005 collection of such things). His first book was Another Roadside Attraction (1971) and his latest one is called B Is for Beer (2009). Perhaps his most popular work was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which was made into a film by his good friend Gus Van Sant in 1993. Today is Tom's birthday; he was born in Blowing Rock (great name!), North Carolina, in 1936. According to Michael Dare, this is how Tom writes: "When he starts a novel, it works like this. First he writes a sentence. Then he rewrites it again and again, examining each word, making sure of its perfection, finely honing each phrase until it reverberates with the subtle texture of the infinite. Sometimes it takes hours. Sometimes an entire day is devoted to one sentence, which gets marked on and expanded upon in every possible direction until he is satisfied. Then, and only then, does he add a period." Without working too hard, we found 60 cases of today's typo in OhioLINK and 474 in WorldCat. While some of these are bound to be false hits (both terms correct in context), the majority would appear to be genuine typos.

*Had, actually; they now boast over 1,000.

(Tom Robbins, September, 24, 2005, in San Francisco, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Rasberr* (for Raspberr*)

My raspberries are off the bush in the backyard now, but raspberry was on the blackboard at the cafe where I ate my lunch yesterday. It was misspelled, however, which is a pretty common mistake, I think, given that the P is sort of "silent." But rather than rudely give the wait staff the old "Bronx cheer"—otherwise known as "blowing a raspberry"—I stayed silent as well, making a mental note to consider this one a candidate for "Typo of the Day." And, like the luscious fruit itself, it proved to be rather a good one! I found 75 examples in OhioLINK this morning, and 492 in WorldCat. (Although, considering that there are eleven surnames in NACO spelled Rasberry, many, if not most of those, are assuredly not typos; when personal names are excluded, the results go down to 25 and 221.) I also found myself curious as to the derivation of the phrase "blowing a raspberry" (or occasionally a "strawberry"). According to Wikipedia, this crude gesture, which basically involves sticking out your tongue and blowing, is known as a "raspberry, rasp, or razz" and was originally an instance of Cockney rhyming slang: "In this case, 'raspberry tart' rhymes with 'fart.' It was first recorded in 1890." Some people believe the term "raspberry" (or "strawberry") has more to do with the look of a partially protruding tongue, or even the red mark left on a baby's tummy (in a variant of this activity), but I wasn't able to verify that theory. The fruit itself is (possibly) called raspberry due to the "raspy" look of its stem.

(Two raspberries on a spoon, 2007, by Pierre Camateros, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid