Funny typos (that you may or may not have caught)

I might have mentioned these somewhere on here before ...

In high school writing for the local weekly in the days of linotypes, I typed "Jerry Burroughs hit for 27 points" Linotype operator transposed it into "Jerry Burrough shit for 27 points." This wasn't a kid on our team, so no problem there. But the superintendent of school said, very dead-panned as he passed me in the hall, "Very odd way to score points, wouldn't you say?

Also in the linotype days at a daily back in the day, we had a football players/wrestler named Flucker. We made it a point to tell the proofreaders - all blue-haired, straight-laced old women - to make sure the checked this name closely, we didn't want the 'l' left out under any circumstances. It took them a minute, but it finally dawned on them what we were talking about.

And, maybe they still do, but back then the cops used "fnu lnu" for first name unknown, last name unknown. We had to write this correction in the mid-90s:

"An article in Saturday's Local section incorrectly reported that a suspect identified as "Fnu Lnu" had been indicted by a federal grand jury. "Fnu Lnu" is not a name. FNU is a law enforcement abbreviation for "first name unknown," LNU for "last name unknown." Officials knew the suspect only by the nickname `Dezo.' "

That correction made the Columbia Journalism Review. A playwright to thought it was hilarious, titled an off-Broadway play in New York as Fnu Lnu with one character named Dezo. And our editor bought a boat. He named it, yep, FNU LNU.

 

Pre-season preview story. In referencing the team's best qualities I mean to write "its strength.."

a 't' was added to its ... it was a girls basketball story.

Hilarity ensured. I assigned our stringer to cover that team's home games all season. LOL

 

LOL. Denounce thyself!

 

Can I blame soccer on this thread too, or shall I head directly to the chilly shores of the Lake of Fail (just 15 minutes from Lake Tahoe)?

 

Dead-passed? Denounce thyself, too!

You can't have a typo in a thread about typos. It's in the SJ manual, page 37.

 

It’s like a misspelling in an article about a spelling bee.

 

Oh, my. So many floating in my brain. Every one that got in is a wound on my soul.

One that sticks out, so to speak, is Tommy Johnson surgery.

Yeouch.

 

Mine was saying a baseball player was "hit by a bitch," but it was caught in editing.

 

Had a baseball player upset that he wasn't getting a chance to play in spring training.
He worked hard in the offseason to get ready, but now he spends every day on the beach. (Blue-haired proofreaders didn't catch that it was supposed to be "on the bench").

 

College volleyball
Switching pronouns in a headline from plural to singular (their to its). When deleting "their" from the headline, forgot the t. Still added the its after. It made it to print. I wasn't the designer or the final stop for the page before the printers, but I was on the sports/copy desk that night so I was one of the people who missed the typo.

 

hungary Tigers. Ugh.

 

around Thanksgiving, copy desk had a headline about donations needed at local food panties