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Warning - Some posts may cause choking, spitting of beverage and /or a severe giggle fit. This advice brought to you by regular reader Louisa.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

On tupos. Er...typos.


It's official - I am the Typo Queen. It's not that I can't spell, indeed English was one of the subjects I excelled at way back on the ark where I attended school. I'm just not a very good typist. I can type pretty fast - with both hands too! - but my fingers run a few seconds faster than my brain, and they get me into some awful pickles.

My first memorable typo was during an online conversation about four years ago. The good thing about this typo was that it was during a comment post, so I was able to edit it almost right away, the bad thing was that I had people following the topic, and so several unsuspecting people received an email with the original typo in there.

Now, this was no ordinary typo. Oh no, when I stuff up I go all the way. Not for me 'pont' instead of 'pint', or 'hekko' instead of 'hello'. I had to do it properly. I was addressing an online friend named 'Clint', and what did I do? I left the 'n' out from his name. Oh, the embarrassment. Oh, the shame. But also.... oh, the hysterical laughter that ensued.

I create typos every day - heck, there's typos in every single post or comment that I type - but that first one is something to aspire to, definitely.

Moving on.

I have mind blocks with certain words. I KNOW how to spell them, but apparently my fingers didn't pass their school spelling tests. Take 'the'; such an easy word, yet my fingers seem to think there's a 'w' at the end. 'The' is such a frequently used word that you can probably imagine just how much time I waste deleting that extra 'w' when I check my posts. My most common typo is 'with' - that one gets to have an 'e' tacked on the end nine times out of ten.

Even when I go through my posts/comments, I never seem to catch all of my typos, yet if I am reading someone else's stuff I spot them right away. Weird, isn't it?

Still, although I would love to take credit for my most recent spate of typos (they were uncommonly amusing), this time I had a good reason. I'm working from the hubby's PC for my blogs, but usually I am using my laptop. The laptop that has only has half a working keyboard (or keboa, as the case may be). Trying to type when most of the important letters don't work is a lesson in patience. If I am being diligent, I copy and paste from an old word file for my needs, but honestly, not only is that way too time consuming, but also kind of boring. You see, I found an alternative way to make up for my lack of letters. You just miss them out altogether, or substitute them for alternatives. Of course, it's almost impossible to decipher, but I like to give people a puzzle or two.

To date, there have been many new words added to my Typo Dictionary, but one of them has taken on a new life all by itself, and one of them is possibly my favorite non-word in the history of mankind.

'Popely' has been adopted by a few of my friends and is being used steadily. (I have a broken 'r' on the laptop, I'm pretty sure you can figure that one out). This word was created by simply ignoring the fact that the r's were missing, and I have hopes of seeing it in a real dictionary in the near future.

My favorite non-word is an alternative version of 'frustrating'. Now, as well as the 'r' not working on the old laptop, among the other broken (boken) keys are 's' and 'g'. It was a conundrum to be sure, but I solved it, and by using 'w' and 'z' to replace the 'r' and 's' respectively, I was able to work around it. The missing 'g' just got left off - I mean, it's silent anyway, so who needs it? I was left with 'fwuztwatin', and honestly, it makes me laugh just typing it.

Gotta love typos.

3 comments:

  1. Reminded of lambananas for some strange reason.
    lambananas, lambananas, lambananas.

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  2. Hey Rayna! I won't reply to ALL of your comments, but I just wanted to say thanks for stopping by! I too am glad I started this, even though I'm going to bed every night worrying about the next day's blog.*snorts*

    Wasn't it superlambananas? That's such a funny word to type (and say for that matter). Superlambananas, superlambananas, siperlamabanas ....oh lordy *reads last attempt), it's a typo queen's dream!

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  3. I LOVE you boken keboa! It iz mazzivele entewtainin!

    The words I mistype most:
    psych is always psycho...
    thing is think
    and d and s are largely interchangeable...

    My laptop also requires a harder press than seems merited, so missing letters are the norm.

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