"typo"

[Dan Goncharoff]

Isn't a misspelling a form of "typo"? If a typesetter transposed two
letters or otherwise misspelled a word, wouldn't that clearly be a
typo? If the typesetter is now a writer sitting in front of a computer
running Microsoft Word, using technology that no longer requires the
separate function of a typesetter, are the writer's mistakes still
typos?

I would argue the misspelling on the school wall is not a "typo", but
only because of the medium. In any form of written material, however,
wouldn't a misspelling correctly be a typo?

DanG

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      "typo"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> With the ubiquity of computerized word-processing, the standard (and historical) sense of "typo" as 'typographical error' (thus in the OED) probably needs revision.  As in the picture making the rounds on the internet today, the wrongly-spelled word "school" painted in large characters on a street in front of a school.  The error is being regularly referred to as a "typo" (not a "painto").
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100811/od_yblog_upshot/behold-americas-educational-system-captured-in-a-single-photograph
>
> Now "typo" means simply 'misspelling'?  Or certain kinds of mispelling (like transposed characters) but not others?
>
> --Charlie
>
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