Typos: Bud And Good?

I meant "bad" of course. "Bad And Good." Damn them typographical errors. Guaranteed to drive all us obsessive compulsive, perfectionist, high-brow, nit-pickers totally bitty. (I meant batty.)

You can be a great speller (should I have said spellist?) and very meticulous in everything you do but eventually the ugly, child-eating typo gremlin's gonna get you. You can look at a job for hours, days, even weeks. The job can be proofed twice by three different people. It gets client sign-off and goes for the print order of 250,000. With varnishes, foil stamping and embossing. There's, like, three press checks. Finally, your print samples arrive while the bulk of the order is sent to the direct mail company, personally addressed to a quarter of a million people and sent. It looks gorgeous. Then, somebody walks by your desk, glances at the piece for like a nanosecond and utters the most-hated of hated words; "That's not how you spell that." Curse words, defibrillators and certain prayers of entreaty were invented for moments like this.

Now, a typo may be a mistake that does an instant number on your blood pressure but spotting one that someone else has done can be a bright spot in an otherwise hum-drum day. Like “This contract shall be effective as of the singing of this agreement.” See what happened there? Reverse two letters and you are no longer signing a legal document, you're agreeing to a singalong. Which can be fun. Or miss a single word space and you get a totally different meaning, as in “The penis mightier than the sword.” That there's more than an oops, it's a pack your bag and touch up your résumé thing. Or omitting one little letter, i.e. “Sign up now for our Beauty and Fitness Curse” or “Our massage treatments help relive your pain” is a sure way to attract attention. And “We proudly feature some-day shipping” could be a stab at truth in advertising but most likely not. 

And you might laugh at seeing these but the sad part is that some of that laugh belongs in the "because it wasn't you" world. Not because you're a sadist and enjoy seeing other people shoot themselves in the foot but because some days it's reassuring to know that the gremlins do attack other people as well... and they, too, can have bud days. (I meant bad.)