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Typos and Other Sources of Humor

In my job I occasionally have to respond to call center forms documenting mis-shipments, missing parts, overages, etc. So, often I end up doing some kind of investigation. One of the forms I got last night stated that somebody would need to "inertigate" the issue.

I'm thinking if I procrastinate enough I will have reached the inert state desired.

Do you have anything similar? Instead of correcting the hoi polloi, let's celebrate the uniqueness.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on October 24, 2009 at 3:06pm

Picture not coming through for me.

Permalink Reply by Glenn Sogge on October 24, 2009 at 3:12pm

No problem for me.(?) You can also see it at the blog about 1/2 way down the page.

Permalink Reply by Klaus Motan on October 25, 2009 at 3:38am

...so, where´s the problem ?
It´s simply the next step of evolution - never heard of bilocation? Must be something similar, or does she simply divide...?

Permalink Reply by Jared Lardo on October 31, 2009 at 10:59pm

They also do that with "atheists" on Youtube all the time. I'm not sure whether it's intended as a form of petty vandalism and a slur or if it's just an endlessly common screw-up. I don't think it's done for a deep, philosophical reason such as that atheists are like one big hiveminding beast and should therefore be referred to with a singular noun. I imagine that this pattern keeps showing up due to a reiterated misunderstanding of how to write what is spoken--like the insistence that many have that an apostrophe goes between a noun and the "S" used to pluralize it. In this case the reasoning would go something like this: Since there's an S on the other side of the T and it's hard to make that "sts" noise, the S after the T is unnecessary.

Permalink Reply by Howard S. Dunn on December 11, 2009 at 7:06pm

On Yahoo! Answers Religion & Spirituality (Y!A R&S) (where atheists are well represented cause it is so much fun) 'athiest' is a common Christian spelling of the plural form of 'atheist'. So, I started calling them "Christian".

BTW - there's an atheist member of Y!A R&S who's nic is "Tucking Fypos" - he has a million of 'em.

Permalink Reply by Glenn Sogge on October 31, 2009 at 3:16pm

Found in a Facebook status message: hey girl, there is an huge flee market down here.

I'm thinking there was a big one on Wall Street, too.

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on October 31, 2009 at 3:22pm

Hehehehehe!

Permalink Reply by Glenn Sogge on November 1, 2009 at 4:37pm

I don't even watch any because it gives me nightmares. If I tried to come up with some myself, I think I would never get any sleep.

Permalink Reply by Lois Lane on November 1, 2009 at 6:00pm

Both anecdotes below are TRUE.

1. Quite a few years ago, a non-profit organization published an article in its magazine from a police officer. The blurb about the officer said that he addressed groups of fellow police officers anally.

2. An elderly, female acquaintance had the last name Nally and a first name that started with A, and used the userid "anally" with her AOL address for years. I kept thinking that someone who knew her better than I did would discourage her from using that email address.

(I think spellcheckers should be augmented with some kind of a flashing visual indicator for certain words to indicate a high probability that the word is likely to be inappropriate or unintentional!)

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on November 6, 2009 at 11:38am

That's funny. I added their blog to the RSS feed on the front page.

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on November 2, 2009 at 1:15pm

Re: Words misheard

I caught a small portion of one of those celebrity gossip shows, you know the ones where they stalk celebrities and report what, when, and where they ate, and other such nonsense. I really hate those shows. But anyway, one actress was asked how she managed to stay so thin, and she replied something about her family or parents or something along those lines, and the reported said "It must be the genes." She looked down at her blue jeans and said something like "Yes, they are nice."

This is only a vague interpretation, but I got the essentials right. It's rather funny because it could happen to any of us if we aren't thinking clearly.

Once, many years ago, my first day on at a new job, a woman walked up to me and stuck out her hand and said "gay." I thought, man, I'm being outed my first day here. Then it dawned on me she was introducing herself. Her name was Gaye.

Permalink Reply by Glenn Sogge on November 3, 2009 at 7:45am

From the introduction section of a discussion here on A|N:

I still find it funny that they have no problem with science when they can make it jive with the religion ...

This is one of the classic "hear it but never see it written" mistakes. With sloppy pronunciation, you can very easily go from "jibe" to "jive". One other one I heard/seen multiple times is "try a new tact" instead of "try a new tack". I don't think that both correct terms come from sailing really has anything to do with it.