A local magazine’s article about a coworking space included a number of amusing typos, but my favorite had to be when the author described the floorplan, noting “… comfortable booths and couches and desks with partisans to offer privacy.” Neither the writer nor the editor caught that one. Obviously, the author meant “partitions,” as in dividers between spaces. “Partisan” has multiple meanings, none of which involve furniture, but the one that immediately sprang to mind was a member of a secret militia fighting against occupying forces, like the Soviet citizens who helped repel the Nazi advance. Not sure armed guerrillas would create a sense of privacy, but different strokes for different folks and all that.
I continue to mourn the elimination of newspaper copy editors, combined with reporters who rely on spellcheck to handle their proofreading. That’s how you end up with incomprehensible captions like this one from the IndyStar about an ICE raid at a Crawfordsville restaurant: “Crawfordsville Human Rights Commission asks questions and Crawfordsville residents support restaurant and family while wondering future.”
Goofs don’t get much bigger than this. Time Magazine recently reported that the Australian government printed 46 million $50 banknotes with a typo … and to make it more embarrassing, it involved leaving the third “i” out of “responsibility.” At least they didn’t misspell “Australia.”