"typo"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Aug 12 00:35:37 UTC 2010


At 7:36 PM -0400 8/11/10, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>The Macmillan Dictionary does not cover typos in emails or blog posts:
>
>typo noun [countable] informal
>a small mistake in a printed document

That's certainly too narrow.  I think any academic who "publishes" a
paper in .pdf form (increasingly constituting the only publication of
record, e.g. for conference proceedings or working papers) and
transposes letters commits a typo.

Then there's the spinoff, "thinko".  Don't know when that dates from
but it's been around awhile.

LH

>
>The Wiktionary definition is currently general enough to cover the
>incorrectly painted letters. Perhaps it is too general:
>
>typo (plural typos) Noun
>    1. A compositor.
>    2. A spelling or typographical error.
>
>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/typo
>
>The Wikipedia entry on on "Typographical personification" may offer an
>explanation. The "typo demon" now visits road painters as well as
>typists.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typo_fairy
>

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