By Paul Carrier
You might think a book about a couple of guys who set out in search of typos on signs, menus and the like would only appeal to writers, editors, journalists, English teachers and the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster.
Throw in readers who love a road trip, obsessives of all stripes and the many folks who just plain cringe at the sight of a sign reading “mens’ room” and you have a more complete picture of The Great Typo Hunt’s intended audience.
Co-author Jeff Deck, formerly an associate editor at Rocks & Minerals magazine, cooked up the idea for this novel cross-country tour and enlisted Benjamin Herson to help lead what Deck dubbed the Typo Eradication Advancement League.
Finding and, hopefully, fixing typos “was the good that I, Jeff Deck, was uniquely suited to visit upon society,” Deck writes of his brainstorm’s inception. “I would change the world, one typo correction at a time.”
Deck and Herson became self-appointed ambassadors of orthography, which the dictionary defines as “the art of spelling according to accepted usage.” Deck's tool kit included a black marker, a black Sharpie, white and colored chalk, vinyl stick-on letters and what he calls the “elixir of correction,” which, I assume, is Wite-Out. He and Herson launched a blog to chronicle their adventure.
Spotting typos was the easy part; they’re everywhere. (My personal favorite: “LONLEY? YOU GOT A FRIEND IN BOOZE”) The real work was to be found in correcting them. In some cases, that required stealth. In others, it involved requesting permission to make the necessary changes.
Amazingly, many spelling- and grammar-challenged people actually welcomed the offer of help. Of course, others were apathetic, openly hostile or sadly misguided. One clerk vigorously defended a sign for toys that offered “year around” fun “in doors” and out. She even produced a dictionary that showed a dot between the two syllables of “indoors,” which, she said, proved that it was two words, not one.
Deck, who narrates The Great Typo Hunt, knows his stuff; occasionally his pedantry is off-putting. But while he takes his task seriously, he retains his sense of humor as well. The sometimes grandiose descriptions of his mission are entertaining because they’re so over-the-top.
“With my hands firmly grasping the ladder of attentiveness and care,” he muses while holding a ladder for a guy who is fixing a sign advertising “sweatts,” “who knew how high my countrymen could ascend? Perhaps to the very heavens of perfect spelling and grammar, where seraphim cry hosannas to the correctly deployed apostrophe and cherubim strike down subject-verb disagreements with their burning blades!”
Deck makes it clear that he was not out to embarrass or belittle folks who broke the rules, but rather to encourage them to edit themselves more carefully and to "inspire other ordinary people to speak out when they see mistakes.” This crusade was not elitist, nor was it a lark.
In fact, Deck and his confederates have animated discussions about the underpinnings of their work. Weren’t the origins of accurate spelling arbitrary? If the meaning of a misspelled sign is clear, is it worth correcting? Is there a significant difference between errors that are deliberate, informed choices and those made out of ignorance?
As I neared the end of the book, I began to grow weary of the four recurring scenarios: the covert fix, the brush-off, the cooperative employee and the SOB with anger-control issues. But then Deck threw in an entirely unexpected - and quite real - crisis, which pulled me back into the story.
Give The Great Typo Hunt a shot. Its a good read. Better yet, it's a good read.
