Just My Typo: From "Sinning with the Choir" to "the Untied States"

by Drummond Moir

Overview

A charming collection of typographical errors, slips of the pen, and embarrassing misprints, Just My Typo celebrates the awful and the sublime mistakes that riddle our feeble human attempts at communication.
 
It's time to accept the truth: typos are everywhere. Legal documents are riddled with errors, headlines of respectable publications are rife with misspellings, and even your favorite books need a few reprints to get everything right. Isn't it time we learned to laugh at our mistakes instead of despairing? Just My Typo is an irresistible collection of the most humorous, mistakenly poignant, and downright awful typos in texts, from the Bible to insurance advertisements to political slogans.
 
Within these pages, you’ll travel back in time with great figures from history, such as Sir Francis Drake (who circumcised the world in a small ship) and Rambo (the famous French poet). You’ll also find valuable moral instruction (“Blessed are the meek, for they shall irrigate the earth.”), and meet politicians who exploit disasters to boost their pubic profiles. Structured according to categories (such as, “To Be or To Be: Typos in Literature”), you’ll easily find either a quick laugh or a relaxing—and cringe-inducing—read. A few more of the gems within:

· “The Queen pissed graciously over the Menai Bridge.”
· “I am certain of one thing. Whatever may come between us—and wherever he may be on earth—Arthur will always remember that I love ham.” (The Parting, Millicent Hemming)
· “Love is just a passing fanny.”

Editors, proofreaders, and writers everywhere pull their hair out trying to eliminate mistakes, to no avail. Celebrating the humanity of our errors and the timelessness of mistakes, Just My Typo is essential reading for anyone who values the power and peril of the written word.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385346603
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/08/2014
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Drummond Moir grew up in Edinburgh and studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and Daiichi Keizai University in Fukuoka, Japan. Now based in London, he is Editorial Director of Sceptre, one of the UK’s leading literary imprints.

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Excerpted from "Just My Typo"
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Copyright © 2014 Drummond Moir.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

04/14/2014
This amusing collection of typos, organized by category, shows what can happen when “a single letter, punctuation mark, or space is in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Moir, editorial director of U.K. literary imprint Sceptre, begins with errors in literature, such as Richard Dawkins referring to CERN’s particle accelerator as “The Large Hardon Collider.” He also remarks on the numerous typos in James Joyce’s Ulysses, most of which, due to the novel’s challenging mix of literary styles, “went largely unnoticed…forty years after publication.” Typos from the news media include mistakes such as the New York Times referring to Pakistan’s capital as “Islambad,” and a London Times advertisement seeking a “young person, age about 81 or 19.” Moir demonstrates the importance of punctuation, as when a cotton-broker received, in answer to whether he should make any purchases, this telegraph: “No price too high.” This breezy read proves the saying, “every time you make a typo, the errorists win.” B&w photos throughout. (July)

Publishers Weekly

To err is human. To laugh when other people err is even more human. And Drummond Moir will make you feel very human when you read this book. Because you'll be laughing is what I'm saying. A lot.”  —A.J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy  

"A collection of gaffes and boo-boos that may very well send us on another typo hunt through time, space, and the internet. Thanks a lot, Drummer—Desmond—Mr. Moir."
—Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson, The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time
 
"The typo: creator of angst and giggles. Best not read this in public, as you will laugh out loud. Or have the urge to nudge the stranger sitting next to you, just so you can tell them about that hilarious thing you just read. Like how Hitler had a ruthless gazpacho. Or how Rambo was a famous French poet. Or how… oh, just read the damn thing." - Jen Campbell, author of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

From the Publisher