Funny Typos

[dios4vida]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds hilarious typos in my manuscripts.

In my first WIP, I had a moment where the protag is given a powerful magical object. It's supposed to be a solemn moment for her and the gift-giver. He looks at her and hands her this box, saying, "I pray it brings you lunch on your journey."

LUCK!! LUCK!! Not lunch, luck!!

And since it was a box, and I hadn't caught that (in a dozen read-throughs) before my Mom read it, I had to hear about the lucky lunchbox all the time.

That was 10 years and three WIPs ago. I still get teased about it every now and then.

How about you guys? Have you ever found something ridiculous like that in your writing? (Please, someone say yes!)

[guichizango]

I've had that happen. I'd written a story and had my sister read it, having thought that I had polished it. I had a woman open a door and find a bird and a door on her doorstep, when I really meant dog.

[polymath]

I suffer from the Curse of Murphy: If it can go wrong, it will. The harder I try, the more error sets in. When given two choices, odds are two to one I'll choose the wrong answer. Though sometimes errors are happy coincidences, rarely, they more often than not are Freudian slips. Frequently, I'm beset by homophone conflicts. And certifiable typos from having poor eyesight and striking the wrong key and not seeing that a lower case A should be an S, an I an O or U, an R an E. Sometimes I write exactly what I intend but the context is off and the meaning received is different than intended.

One of my e-mail accounts receives all mail sent to a domain name that resembles a well known international business' address. Much of the mail is important, confidential, and problematic if not received by the intended recipients. But for a one-letter transposition, the mail was lost. I do notify the sender when I can.

He gave them a peace of his mine.
The gang got up to wall the hijinks they were aloud.
The Nose Bowl parade was lost Saturday.
He sot on the park bench, waiting fur the cunning linguists to come.

[Rachel Ventura]

Lol @ "cunning linguists," Poly I'm assuming that was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

I once took a writing course at a local comm. college. One of the participants/students was workshopping one of her fanfics (which is OK online, I guess, but probably not for a college-level English class). I still remember the ms saying something like "<insert anime character here> got throne into the wall during the fight." Elvis, as you know, got walled into his throne. The King died sitting on his royal heinous.

Another one mentioned by one of my HS English teachers: A personal essay from a former student in which she described herself as "humble and self-defecating." I guess that's why they call it "talking sh*t"?

I always love the funny typos on Jay Leno's "Headlines" segment. There was one from some years back -- or maybe saw it online or something, I don't remember -- some guy put an ad in the paper offering to paint your feces (not "fences") for reasonable rates. (August Wilson is somewhere rolling in his grave. Or maybe he's RITDL -- rolling in the dirt laughing.) Some are correct in spelling but bad moves in context, like one about some college professor from Yale who received a rather colorful tribute in his obit: "Quirky obituary for ex-Conn. professor." I mean, sure, it's correct in that the abbreviation for Connecticut is in fact "Conn.," but really, do you want to imply that this beloved old guy from the Ivies might have been a Hartford ex-con?

[MattLarkin]

Not from my manuscript, though this typo from a courthouse in Delhi was funny.

[polymath]

Lol @ "cunning linguists," Poly I'm assuming that was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

Uh-hum. Uh, an innuendo pun riffing on an innuendo pun. Comic irony on comic irony. Clever and funny. Delightful.

[dios4vida]

That's a good one, Matt. I'll have to pull up a photo I took of a cafe menu in Jerusalem and post it. It was so disgraceful it was hilarious.

[Mira]

Ha!

I can't remember any typos I did myself, but I sometimes like to read the funny things auto-correct does when you're texting. Here's a link of some fun ones:

http://runt-of-the-web.com/4284082998

[Falls Apart]

At first glance, he’s a normal kid, but there’s an utter lack of empathy in his expressions that’s disarming once you notice it.

...oops.

[Rachel Ventura]

Ha!

I can't remember any typos I did myself, but I sometimes like to read the funny things auto-correct does when you're texting. Here's a link of some fun ones:

http://runt-of-the-web.com/4284082998

Ellen DeGeneres does a sketch on her talk show called "Clumsy Thumbsy" that features exactly what you mentioned here. It's like "Headlines" updated for the iPhone era. Apparently typos are a pretty popular humor item elsewhere, too:

Consumer Reports magazine has a feature on the back cover page called "Selling It" which has the same kind of thing but for advertising; they've even come out with a book featuring some of their best entries. (Think Don Draper meets the Microsoft Paperclip.)

There's a site -- I had bookmarked it but forgot the name; it's apparently the brainchild of a U.K. comic/journalist -- that looks at websites with funny domain names. Like "Pen Island," the name of a store selling suggestive-looking Parker Jotters or something, and Google's own branch at the Cook Islands (a British island territory), google.co.ck. The technical term for these is "domain hack" but I prefer to call them "Googlecocks" for just that reason.

[MattLarkin]

From my most recent edit of Legacy of Moon and Fire:

"Shouts went up the moment he appeared. One sailor dropped his wench, fell to the deck."

[writersink]

Ha!

I can't remember any typos I did myself, but I sometimes like to read the funny things auto-correct does when you're texting. Here's a link of some fun ones:

http://runt-of-the-web.com/4284082998

That just made my day.