As texting on mobile devices continues to take the world by storm, more and more people are confronted with the complications of using an interface to communicate. And of course, cursing themselves for the mistakes they make.
Is this typed correctly so far? Let’s run a spellcheck: No, the word “texting” hasn’t made it into the dictionary yet, nor has the word “speelcheck” for that matter. Whoops, we mean “spellcheck”. See, now how do we tell the difference between an omission in the dictionary and a fumble on the part of our fat, clumsy fingers?
“Fat fingers” is one common excuse for typos, but more commonly users tend to make reference to “the Typo Fairy”. Usually depicted as female, she is the inverse of a muse, for what one gives us in inspiration, the other takes away in frustration. And she gets around; she’s known internationally as “Tryckfelsnisse” in Sweden, “Sætternissen” in Denmark, “Trykkleif” in Norway, “Painovirhepaholainen” in Finland, “Chochlik Drukarski” in Poland, “A nyomda ördöge” in Hungary, “Druckfehlerteufelchen” in Germany, and finally the Spanish give her the brief name of “Gazapos”.
Sometimes the reference is made instead to a male “typo demon”, who has even inspired people to create fan art of his likeness, perhaps in hope of appeasing the sprite.
The Typo Fairy is a charmingly antiquated notion, spawning back to the dawn of printing itself. That first personification would be “Titivillus” – the original patron demon of scribes and calligraphy. The legends of Titivillus first came to light in relation to the Medieval church, when the only way to produce copies of the holy scripture was to write out a copy by hand. The earliest literary reference to this devil of letters was in 1285 by one John of Wales.
Modern users can relate to the feeling of being heckled mercilessly by a mischievous entity focused on turning our well-ordered thoughts to gibberish. As we twiddle our styluses, work our thumbs over our Androids, or attempt to make our touch-typing teacher proud on a regular keyboard, a single move made in error can wreck our intentions, lose our data, send a Google search off into Never-Never Land, crash our programs, and dash our hopes and dreams to the ground.
Quite literally in some cases! A short list of some of Titivillus’ greatest coups:
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A missed comma in a contract for utility poles in Canada, in 2006, cost Rogers Communications Inc. $2.13 million USD.
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Misprinted scratch-off game cards distributed by a Roswell, New Mexico, United States car dealership in 2007 obligated them to pay out a total of $50 million USD instead of the intended $1000. The company tried many steps to appease angry contestants, but it generally became a PR disaster for them.
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Typos in URLs have led to the cottage industry of typosquatting, in which opportunistic webmasters buy up domains that are one letter off from famous web destinations. Wikipedia itself is a victim of this practice, with others owning domains answering to wiipedia, wikpedia, eikipedia, wilipedia, wikipedi, wikipediia, wikipedi, and wikipaedia.
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And of course, the very name of a technology company is itself a typo. It’s a very famous search engine!
Programmers, being at one with the keyboard in their effort to direct the computer’s actions, have a whole branch of their cultural language devoted to typos. The terms “newsfroup”, “hing”, “borken”, “cow orker”, “scrool”, “filk”, “grilf”, and “fairings” are all recognized jargon terms that started out as typos.
Of course, as luck would have it, the very act of writing a blog post about typos has doubtless produced numerous examples right here on the page. Be sure to point them out on social media – if you can spell them correctly, that is! And be sure to offer a sacrifice of appeasement to the Typo Fairy – maybe she’ll leave you alone the next time you text your girlfriend.
