Theend (for the end)

Today is the end of 2009. Tomorrow we all have to start dating our documents 2010, which is a switch I always find difficult, especially when both digits change. We are now also at the end of an interesting and memorable decade in American history. However, before we say goodbye for the year, make sure we don't rush to the end and squish our words together. This is not a common error, and seems to occur most of the time in summary notes.

Happy New Year!

Liz Bodian
Chicago Public Library

Image of the ball and fireworks in Times Square at the end of last year from Wikimedia Commons.

xHistory (for $xHistory)

There is a series of these sexy typos, many of which have been mentioned before on this blog. This can happen when the delimiter sign disappears or is doubled. There are 9 occurrences of this typo in the OhioLINK catalog, and I even found some in the Library of Congress catalog. WorldCat has so many entries they won't all display.

Make sure your database is not x-rated or these records will be history!

Liz Bodian
Chicago Public Library

Acapella (for a cappella)

Two weeks ago, I was captured by the reality TV show "The Sing-off." Since I was an a cappella singer in college, and since said college was represented by the 2nd place team, I was very curious to see what would happen. Acapella is actually the first typo listed on the Ballard list as sorted by probability, and according to singers.com, is "among the most butchered and misunderstood musical terms." It is found in the OhioLINK online catalog 142 times, many of which are in titles.

So go sing your way through checking this typo in your own database!

Early image of the Yale Whiffenpoofs from Flikr on Creative Commons license.

Liz Bodian
Chicago Public Library

Assesment*, Asessment* (for Assessment*)

As a librarian, I should probably know this by now, but I'm never quite sure how to spell the word Ssshhh. Are there more S's than there are H's or more H's than there are S's? And just how many of each are optimal? How best to assess the situation, given that apparently not all dictionaries consider the shortening of shush to be worthy of inclusion? (Of the ones that do, sh is generally given first, with shh as an alternate spelling.) My 50-year-old, hand-me-down, non-Merriam Webster's is one that doesn't. It furthermore pretty much defines making an ass of oneself when it gives the last meaning of sh as: "in bookbinding, sheep." (Naturally, it meant sheet. But it's not every day you find a typo in the dictionary!) Our typo for the day takes many S's—four of them in fact. Assesment* (cited as "high probability" on the Ballard list) gets 104 hits in OhioLINK and Asessment* (which is not yet listed there) gets 26.

(Latin letter S, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Poinsetta* (for Poinsettia*)

Here’s a little bit of Christmas trivia for today: The poinsettia, a potted plant often associated with Christmas in North America, actually originates from Mexico and Central America. There, the poinsettia bush actually grows up to three metres (ten feet) high!

The red “petals” are actually leaf-like bracts, with small yellow flowers in the middle. And poinsettias don’t just come in red—the bracts are also available in white, pink, mottled, and striped varieties, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Imagine giving a ten foot tall, striped poinsettia to your hostess for Christmas…I bet she’d be quite confused.

Leanne Olson

Conngress* (for Congress*)

December 24, 1851 was the date of the worst fire in the history of the Library of Congress. It lost two-thirds of its books, or around 35,000 volumes.

Fires are not uncommon reasons for destruction of libraries, unfortunately, even in modern days. The Norwich Central Library in August 1994 was considered the worst British library fire in living memory; it destroyed the entire building.

The fire at the Library of Alexandria in ancient times is probably the most famous, but no one knows if it actually happened. Some say Julius Caesar burned the library in 48 BCE; other evidence suggests it was destroyed later, in the succeeding centuries or during the invasion of Arab armies in 642 CE. Perhaps we’ll never know.

The typo conngress* retrieves 13 records from WorldCat; not quite a disaster of library-burning proportions, but good to clean up all the same.

(Photo of the dome in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress from loc.gov)

Leanne Olson

Floklore (for Folklore)

There’s a lot of folklore surrounding the Christmas tree. Many ancient civilizations, including those in Egypt and China, used the fir tree to symbolize eternal life. In medieval Christianity a fir tree hung with apples (a “paradise tree”) was used in pageant plays to symbolize the Garden of Eden.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the modern Christmas tree developed in Germany out of the paradise tree and the Christmas pyramid--a series of wood shelves that held decorations such as candles, figurines, and a star. Combining the triangular shelves (holding decorations) with the paradise tree led to the modern concept of the Christmas tree.

The decorative tree eventually migrated across Europe, to North America, and even to China and Japan in the 19th century.

Decorations throughout history have included toys and gifts, ribbon, paper, candies and cakes, glass ornaments, electric lights, and more. I’ve even seen Christmas trees at floral shops in Toronto made entirely out of peacock feathers.

(Photo of a crystal-adorned Christmas tree in the Eaton Centre, Toronto, from Wikimedia Commons)

Leanne Olson