The Great Typo Hunt

by Jeff Deck

  “Hurrkk!” One of the frat-boy revelers outside was evidently unpacking the contents of his stomach.

  “Can you take a week off?” I asked. Jane’s webmistressing skills were in high demand, but she hardly ever took vacation time, so I figured she could squeeze five days out of her employer. “That could get us from Seattle to Minneapolis.”

  “Uh-huh! I’ll talk to the project manager tomorrow.” She got rid of her last card and did a little dance. I had lost the hand, but I’d won a new traveling companion. Jane could now consider herself the fourth official member of the League, and first in my heart.

  Somehow I’d suckered three other people into this demented trip, securing companionship for the majority of those thousands of miles on the open road. The final part of the trip, homeward across the Midwest and into the East, I’d have to do on my own, but by then I’d be back in familiar territory with folks that I could stay with along the way.

  I’d made commitments. I’d secured arrangements. Now there was no denying the trip—the mission.

  3 | First Hunt

  February 23-March 4, 2008 (Somerville and Boston, MA)

  Commences—with repast, drinks, and assorted merriments—the adventure of our Hero, Who boldly, singly, launches himself amidst familiar streets with unfamiliar steps. Though carrying forth his righteous Banner, yet our Knight of Orthography stumbles, beaten back by a disquieting storm of uncertainty.

  I threw a going-away party for myself in February, about a week before my departure date. By combining it with the celebration of my twenty-eighth birthday, I created the can’t-miss event of the grim winter season. Kids love a themed birthday party, but my friends were in their twenties, so I skipped the He-Man party hats and centered on grammatical foibles instead. I set up a Typo Creation Station in the living room, where guests could make their favorite typos with alphabetical stickers, and I provided construction paper for cutting out states, real or metaphysical. I heard the back door slam as my reticent roommate fled the apartment, hours before the party was slated to begin.

  Twenty-odd (or maybe just twenty odd) friends showed up, and they proved to be generous souls, showering me with gift cards and road tunes and other items useful for long months on the road. Jane and her sister gave me a snakebite kit and an exquisitely ugly dashboard hula dancer, both of which I would carry all the way around the United States without actually using. By the end of the evening my living room teemed with choice erroneous samples and all manner of cutouts, such as penises, snowflakes, and the obligatory silhouette of a naked lady. From the typos on the walls, apparently my friends expected me to run into a lot of tehs and you looses.

  Jane took me aside during a lull in the revelry and squeezed me in her long arms. “Tell me again why Jeff-Bear is leaving me for so long,” she said.

  “Somebody needs to fix America,” I said. The look on her face said she thought I was being facetious. I leavened my argument with specifics. “I think that I’m the only one who can ferret out these mistakes consistently, day after day. Or at least I’m the only one who cares enough to make it happen. I know that there must be hordes of typos skulking around out there, and that’s a big problem for everybody.”

  “Why is it a problem, exactly?”

  “It’s the creeping menace of carelessness!” I said, not even understanding the question. To me, the iniquity inherent in typos was as plain as a swath cut through virgin forest, or dog feces upon a white beach. It was like asking why armed robbery was a problem. “It’s a malignancy for which I am the lone salve.”

  She sighed.

  I knew in my marrow that the trip could make a palpable difference, perhaps even as much as the deeds of my old classmates. The specifics of how it would do that remained beyond my grasp. Maybe I’d need a few days on the hunt to figure it all out.

  “Just get to Seattle safely, okay?” Jane said. “I don’t want to be all alone at the airport when I arrive.”

  A couple drinks into the evening, the madness of what I was about to do struck me. I was about to leave all of these excellent friends behind for two and a half months, and my girlfriend for a month and a half, in the service of wiping out errata that probably nobody had ever noticed anyway. My concerned mother had asked me, “Are you sure that you’ll be able to find a typo every day?” Though I wasn’t worried about the hunting itself, I feared the greater trials that were sure to accompany it. I would likely encounter resistance the whole way from truculent shopkeepers and restaurateurs. I could even be arrested if I rankled the wrong folk. Plus I’d be blowing several thousand dollars in the process, money that could be spent in far more constructive ways, each now helpfully passing through my mind: exploring the far corners of Europe; a writing sabbatical for finally finishing my half-dozen half-completed novels; lots and lots of video games; or even, hmm, bolstering my pitiful retirement fund. What in the samhail was I doing?

  Somebody encouraged a shot down my throat. A hurrah went out to the birthday boy, and it’s possible someone slapped my bum. My doubts dissipated: the renewed glimmer of the mission’s importance shone into my bleared eyes. This was virtuous work. Suddenly the vision shone bright, and I could see the future unrolling before me like a majestic throw rug, though its fringes were blurred. It would begin one typo at a time, each correction brightening the world a bit more. As each day went on, I’d meet more people, exhorting them to mindfulness of their p’s and q’s (along with any other relevant letters and punctuation marks). The cumulative effects of the multitude I’d inspire along the way would send ripples of proofreading across the land. As the legend of my deeds spread, people would come to my website, the one typo-destroyer in a sea of passive typo-patrol boats. I could inspire them, exhorting them to take up a marker and take their neighborhoods back. This could be the beginning of a true League beyond the humble quartet that I’d cobbled together.

  The next day, once I could move my limbs again, I started gathering survival supplies for the road and cramming clothes into suitcases and bags. I bought a forty-eight-count steamer trunk of Pop-Tarts, reckoning that the abundance of toaster pastries—two dozen brown sugar cinnamon and two dozen frosted strawberry—would account for a major portion of our sustenance on the road.

  I also began to assemble a rude collection of tools for fixing typos. The initial lineup consisted of

  elixir of correction,* standard-sized

  a thick black marker

  a black Sharpie

  white and colored chalk

  vinyl stick-on letters

  All of which I thrust into a plastic shopping bag. It didn’t stack up to, say, the Dark Knight’s utility belt in either efficacy or glamour, but I thought my tools would be able to handle most typo situations. I’d already written my first blog entry about my preparations, and I wrote another about the party. The blog had launched quietly, without fanfare, for Jane was still working on the official front page of the website, with its animated doodads. I didn’t expect very many people to be looking at the site at this pupal stage, anyway. As it turned out, my mom wasn’t my only reader; a couple of my friends posted encouraging notes. I felt nearly ready to depart. With three days left before the Typo Hunt Across America began, I had two things left to do: load up the car with my suitcases, and try my first typo hunt.

  It did occur to me (rather late in the process) that I had never actually corrected a typo. I mean, sure, I’d corrected thousands of my own and those of classmates, colleagues, and magazine and journal authors, but they’d been looking for my help. Now I would need to confront strangers about spelling, punctuation, and grammar. These people would not necessarily share my zeal for such things, particularly in regard to their own errors. How could I, no extrovert by any measure, face them without wilting in fear? I could probably sneak in and make the correction myself in certain cases, but that wouldn’t work all the time. I had created a mission that forced me far out of my comfort zone.

  I could work up to it, though. I had three days. I
began at home. On Sunday, March 2, I corrected my first typo. One that I’d noticed while on the john.

  A year ago, while preparing for the GRE, I’d brought home a shower curtain festooned with mathematical principles. Though I enjoyed the reminders for binomial multiplication, the definition of an obtuse angle caused me acute pain. This first text in need of correction actually featured two for the price of one: a wandering comma, and a that for a than. I uncorked my new vial of elixir, took out a black marker, and went to work. Two downed typos later, I’d cleansed the errors from the tapestry of knowledge.

  I’d bounded off to a great start, two for two. Or, wait—I set the marker and elixir of correction on the sink and took a step back. I ought to be conservative in my counting of typos, so that no one could accuse me of inflating my numbers. Each sign corrected would count as one typo, regardless of how many typos existed within the same sign. Thus, in my dim and dingy bathroom, I established the official policy for the League’s reckoning of typos. I would maintain two totals: one for total typos found during the trip, and another for total number of those typos actually corrected. The ratio of the former to the latter would become a source of statistical obsession for Benjamin throughout the trip.

  The next day I hit the pavement to seek out grammatical malefaction wherever it might lurk. Though not exactly renowned for its politeness and good cheer, Boston served as my home turf, so I figured it’d be safe territory for learning as I went. With typo correction supplies unceremoniously stuffed into my backpack, I headed out for my first mission. Plus I had a doctor’s appointment in Brighton. As I surrendered my wallet to the rapacious gullet of the Massachusetts health-care system, I noted a stack of business cards with a troubling interpretation of the word referral. “Referal”!* To think that one little letter could mean the difference between directing someone to the help they needed and … returning to savagery?

  I steeled myself, preparing for battle. My first time talking to someone. About typos, that is. “Excuse me,” I said to the young, earring-bedecked man behind the counter, “there’s a typo on these cards.”

  He checked for himself, as I had hoped he would. The guy sounded genuinely embarrassed on behalf of Brighton Marine Medical Center as he mentioned that he’d never noticed the missing r.

  I paused, and not merely in anticipation of a further response. I had a terrifying vision that he’d give me the go-ahead and then watch, intrigued at first, as I inserted the r into each and every card. He’d forget all about me until a few hours later, when I’d hand the stack back to him, and he’d produce a box from behind his desk with an innocent smile and say, “Oh, hey, I found a couple more.” I’d start the trip two days late and with a sprained correcting arm, only to find a comment from Josh on my blog the next day: “NO, THAT’S CHEATING. You can’t count that as five hundred typos found and corrected. They’re the same error!” So violently taken aback by this condemnation was I that I broke my reverie with a stumble, jerking back as though I’d caught a kryptonite bullet in the shoulder.

  A puzzled stare met my eyes. Right, he’d never noticed the missing r before, and now awaited either our next topic or my graceful departure. I shook my head, as if clearing away any last hopes that my mission would be simple, then offered in a resigned (but hopefully sane) tone, “I suppose this will never be fixed.”

  No. There were thousands of them, the young man assured me. Thousands of errors found, none corrected. No way would I type that into the blog. The Josh-like commentary inside my head had it right. It could only count as one error, no matter how many times it had been printed. The ultimate goal would be to have the next print run corrected (assuming the clients could still read after they’d all been re-feralized).

  Fine, so now I had another rule that could help ward against accusations of inflating my count. Multiple copies of the same typo-sporting document, like multiple typos on a single document, would count as one typo.

  After my appointment, I headed for Back Bay, choosing a path along Boylston Street, under the upthrust of the city’s twin spires, the Prudential and Hancock towers. Today, as usual, moderately well-off shoppers bustled across the Boston thoroughfare, popping into its chain apparel stores and grabbing a bite to eat at pseudo-Italian cafés. The mild weather had put complacent smiles on many faces, including my own. I weaved through various stores, but I found precious little signage to inspect in many of them. I began to wonder if my mother’s fretting had been more sensible than I’d realized. Sure, I thought I saw typos all the time, but now that I was seeking them out, maybe they wouldn’t turn out to be so numerous.

  Then the East Coast’s favorite bargain clothing store, Filene’s Basement, rebuked that thought with near-biblical force. As any decent otherworldly omen should, the typo appeared above me: MENS CONTEMPORARY. And below it … MENS’ BOXED TIES! Two varieties of error on the same word. I’d had a suspicion during the birth of the League that apostrophes would turn out to be a problem area for people.

  Then the doubting raven’s dread prophecy came to pass: I walked on out of the store without saying anything, leaving the blasphemous MENS hanging in my wake. Men is already plural! You can’t put the s on without the apostrophe, that’s simply wrong, but that wrong I could not work up the nerve to right. I didn’t know how. Stealth was the strategy that appealed to my present cowardice, but this one hovered too high for that to be tactically feasible. I didn’t know whom to ask, or how. Yes, the struggle for grammatical uprightness begins not on the printed page, but in the soul. Caught under the piercing glare of that errant sign, I conjured every excuse I could fathom. The common sales clerk wouldn’t care enough to hear me out to the end of a sentence, right? Oh, and that one passing by seems busy with something else. Even the appearance of the sign seemed reason not to interfere; if not for the grammatical chicanery, a shopper could consider these signs professionally wrought. How could I possibly get anyone to heed my call for justice? Why, again, had I chosen to embark upon this insane trip?

  Though not accosting anyone did eventually turn out to be a prudent choice, I concluded that day’s blog with a note of defeat, scolding myself for having made such vaunted plans and then retreated so easily. I felt I’d joined the ranks of truly miserable failures, falling somewhere between the impotent strivings of Wile E. Coyote and Michael “Brownie” Brown’s FEMA. I didn’t even count the MENS’ BOXED TIES as an official typo find, since those signs seemed to have come as a set. The tally for my early days of hunting came to a mere three typos, only one of which I’d corrected—the one hidden in my bathroom, which I’d meant to be a warm-up. The spirit of TEAL focused on text directed toward many people, words that were open and asking to be read and reread by the masses. My bathroom received far too few visitors to meet those standards.

  Tuesday morning, on a break from packing, I made a quick trip into CVS. After yesterday’s debacle, I didn’t have the heart to go out typo hunting, and so I made the mistake of leaving home without my corrective supplies. Of course, just as neglecting one’s umbrella acts as a dare to the storm gods, my oversight ensured that I’d stumble onto quarry—a tchotchke featuring an apostrophe for a plural: PINA COLADA’S. I snapped a crude picture with my camera phone. I should have known that I couldn’t turn my heightened senses off, or even down to a simmer. O Weird Sisters, O Fates, you had stricken me with a typo in the very store where I’d purchased my elixir of correction! Something in me awakened then, and I loosed a growl of outrage at punctuation used in error. I tore off a corner of the label sticker from some nearby mouthwash, big enough to plant over the needless apostrophe. Without consciously deciding to, I’d pulled off my first stealth correction. I’d vaulted a country mile toward overcoming my inhibitions—for the world’s sake and that of the three or four people following my adventures at that point. Fresh stores acquired, I returned home to finish packing Callie.

  That night, Jane finished the front page of the website. Now we could show our visitors a visual representation of
our route, bios, and a statement of our mission. Not only would our little cartoon avatar heads travel around the map of the United States—they bounced when you hovered over them. I loaded Jane’s superior handiwork online, and with that, the Typo Eradication Advancement League was in business. Oh, the lives we would touch!

  That is, once people actually stumbled across the website in the first place.

  I spent an hour making the little Jeff head bounce when I should have been making a final inventory of my supplies. Then I sent an e-mail to my friends and family announcing the official launch of the website and my imminent departure. I figured a few people might be interested in following along; possibly one of the Boston alt-weeklies would do a piece on the journey when I got back. Though the goals of TEAL were lofty, I didn’t expect many folks to truly understand. I stayed up late ripping my entire CD collection to my laptop and then went to sleep, one last time, in my own bed.

  TYPO TRIP TALLY

  Total found: 4

  Total corrected: 2

  * To avoid sounding like a commercial, I will generally use this term, which is what I tended to call it in my head.

  * When presenting erroneous text within quotes, we’ve left the punctuation outside (“Referral”! rather than “Referral!”) in the interest of precise quotation.

  4 | Benjamin Joins the Party

  March 9, 2008 (Rockville, MD)

  Veteran and rookie grammatical Champions find themselves immediately hemmed in by typos when first they set rubber soles to the hunt. Even this opening Gauntlet is but a dwarf, however, when compared to the Golem of apostrophic misappropriations to come.