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5 Typos That Broke the Bank
Missing 'L' Costs County Money
When an Ottawa County clerk noticed a misspelled word on an election ballot in November 2006, he probably quietly chuckled, until he saw the cost. Leaving out the 'L' in 'public' might have been funny -- if it hadn't ended up costing $40,000 to reprint the ballots.
GPS Typo Makes Swedish Tourists Spend Too Much on Gas
When spelling a word, it's easy to mix up the letters, but most folks notice their error fairly quickly. This past summer, on the other hand, two Swedish tourists who were headed for Capri, Italy made the mistake of typing 'Carpi' into a GPS, and ended up 400 miles away from their destination. With gas prices approaching $6 to $7 a gallon in Europe at the time, it turned out to be an expensive error.
Even if it was close to quitting time, there's still no explanation for why, or how, a Japanese trader sold 610,000 shares of J-Com Co. for 1 yen instead of selling, as he'd intended, 1 share for 610,000 yen. In total, he cost his company $340 million back in September of 2006.
Typos Sends Woman to Puerto Rico Instead of Costa Rica
In February, a travel agent mistyped an airport code and sent his customer to Puerto Rico instead of Costa Rica. That one letter sent the woman 1,500 miles from her intended destination, costing her a few nights of her vacation and around $1,270, too.
Man Undersells Antique Bottle of Ale on eBay Due to Typo
In September 2007, a man listed an antique bottle of ale on eBay and misspelled its name. Instead of typing 'Allsopp's Arctic Ale,' he typed 'Allsop's,' royally confusing collectors. One lucky (and smart) bidder won the 150-year-old bottle of booze for $304 and sold it right away for $503,300. That one forgotten letter cost the original seller quite a chunk of change.
Wacky Sign Hacks and Mistakes
In 2008, a group of students at MIT pasted funny "DANGER" signs all around campus. Even the school's Visual Arts Center can't escape the ubiquitous Rickroll.
Hackers, seemingly pushing a pro-green agenda, figured out how to change the messages displayed on signs at the University of Toronto in Canada.
On first glance, this sign appears to offer up a normal set of bilingual directions. If you read Welsh, you may notice the problem -- the bottom translates to "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated." Looks like someone was slacking on the job, and the e-mail away message ended up pasted onto a sign.
This construction sign on the MIT campus was hacked in 2007 to alert drivers first that the sign had been hacked. The sequence was followed with, "Mass ave bridge closed," "Sunday 04/22/07 6am-3pm," and "to appease Godzilla."
This street sign in Reno City, Nevada was modded by the Glenn Group, an advertising company. While at first it doesn't seem to have anything to do with traffic, it may have helped combat road rage.
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Comments
27
Subscribe to commentsencornomorOct 11th 2009 3:34PM
Desktop publishing became prevalent in the early '90s. Traditional typography companies fell like dominoes. Journeymen proofreaders became unemployable after having served a six-year apprenticeship and garnering decades' worth of experience. Spell check does NOT know the difference between a noun and a verb and will gloss over any word contained in its database. It was the dawn of the era of "**** it, it's good enough". There is no substitute for quality typographical craftsmanship; and that requires a fully-trained professional human being.
georgechevy1Oct 11th 2009 9:22AM
The one I found a little hard to believe was the 340 million mistake...No checks and balances with numbers that high? Have to wonder if the broker was in on it and retired after splitting the money with the buyer.
buminthesun421Oct 11th 2009 9:42AM
Once I SAID something wrong that cost me uncounted tens of thousands of dollars and an unbelievable amount of financial grief. I said, "I do".
debsingssongsOct 11th 2009 10:27AM
I have to agree with the comments regarding the typos and no proofreading. We are in the age of high technology. When I was typing on an electric typewriter, I regularly checked my spelling. I would look up a word in the dictionary and now that I am typing on a computer, I check with www.dictionary.com. I have seen so many errors in stories on the internet. Just today, in an online story, there was a report about carbon monoxide poisonings at a spa. The story was tragic and my prayers are definitely with the surviving family members.
The following is a direct quote from the story: "Authorities have ruled out carbon monoxide poising as the cause." Poising is a legitimate word, so it would have slipped by spell check. This calls for the old-fashioned visual review!
Sandra AkinOct 14th 2009 12:45AM
When I read about the miss spelled ballot and how much is cost to correct the mistake, I chuckled.
I used to live in Clearwater, SC which is about 5 miles, from Augusta, GA. When I was in High School in the late 70's, my mother and I were heading to Augusta to shop, when we saw a new sign several miles from the state line stating how far we were from Augusta. Only problem was, it was spelled Augusat, instead of Augusta . I don't know how long it took the SC state Highway Dept to find out their mistake, but as I recall, the sign was up for several months before it was taken down, and replaced with a sign that was spelled correctly. Don't know how expensive it was to replace the sign, but I'm fairly certain, it wasn't cheap.
PatOct 11th 2009 6:50PM
...in the late 70's... Written as it is means the year 1970. If you're talking about the decade, it should read: in the late '70s (or 1970s).
kerry wenrichOct 14th 2009 4:07PM
oh come on haven't we all made typos we wish we didn't