A great typo

One of the good things about being in a job where I spend much of my time either reading or writing is that I catch a lot of spelling and typographical errors. I even commit the odd one myself.

Sometimes these typos are the innocuous-albeit-annoying ones like teh instead of the, or -toin instead of -tion in words like association. At other times, though, the misspellings create malapropisms that are just plain funny. I've lost count of the number of times I've read about people who have tried to diffuse tense situations instead of defusing them... or the never-ending they're/their/there, it's/its, you're/your or born/borne. And don't even get me started on affect/effect or licence/license.

I think I have a new favourite. As is my wont (not want), I was reading through the comments on a recent CBC News article online. One of the posters wanted, no doubt, to talk about the vicious circle of paying higher rates for a lower level of service on his cellular phone. But the spelling gremlins got there first and our hero ended up referring to a viscous circle.

Ewww.

I couldn't stop myself from thinking about how Gary Larson would have drawn a cartoon to illustrate something like "Gerry suddenly found himself drawn into a viscous circle". Mmmmmmm... imagine all that cartoony goodness.

And, for a bonus point: isn't a spell checker something a wizard should use to make sure his charms are up to snuff? Okay, okay... I suppose a spelling checker isn't much better; imagine a checkers piece rhyming off words like "perspicacious" or "accommodate". How about an "orthographic verification routine"?