A. James Editing

For those of you who have yet to read Going Rogue by Sarah Palin (not to be confused with Going Rouge by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed), not to mention all the alleged falsehoods stated in the book, there’s a typo on page 150 of this hardcover memoir.

Or maybe have the local Girl Scout troop volunteer to chop to them down.

However distracting two “tos” can be, this doubling is not to be blamed on Palin. The finger is to be pointed at the copyeditors and proofreaders at HarperCollins for letting this slip through.

Whoo hoo! So rare to find a news article without any typos. It’s time to celebrate! An article published by The Associated Press on MSNBC entitled “Obama vows to address record deficit woes” has not a single typo. Read it for yourself and then tell me what you think. I couldn’t find a single one.

As a copywriter and editor, it’s my job to find all manner or grammatical errors and smite them wherever they be. What makes my job a lot easier is if there are none to begin with. Such occurrences are worthy of praise. Kudos to you AP. Nicely done!

In a first for Latin America, Mexico City legislators voted to legalize gay marriage. Though it would seem Mexico seeks unity through inclusion, this article is missing something in an otherwise almost perfect article:

Last month, an Argentinean court narrowly blocked what would been the continent’s first gay marriage.

The word “have”. It should be between “would” and “been”. What can I say? It’s a gift. Read the pithy article here.

As with the end of every year, Websites publish things like “Best Viral Videos of the Year”, “The Year in Review”, and the winner of today’s typo spot, “Sexcapades: The Most Scandalous Politicians of the Decade,” compliments of The Root. Here you’ll find infamous greats like Larry Craig, John Edwards, Ted Haggard, and the still very popular Mark Sanford. All of these men have done things that are or have been construed as scandalous. Another thing they all have in common is that they had nothing to do with this sentence:

Here’s a recap of some this decade’s most publicized political perversions—and if we missed anyone, please let us know! We love a good scandal as much as the next person.

The author(s) managed to put an “of” before “some”, but must have overlooked the one that should have come after it.

Sphere, the new name for AOL News, has published an article about the dangers of diacetyl, a chemical used in artificial butter flavoring that has been linked to the deaths of hundreds, and lung failure in others, who are either exposed to the chemical from working with it or from a microwave popcorn addiction, “Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Make Popcorn.”

I suppose typos could be deadly, but no such instances come to mind. We may question the lethality of typos, but we cannot question their frequent occurrence in news stories:

In a report made public last week, NIOSH [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] said that investigators found concentrations of butter flavoring agent 2,3-pentanedione in liquid buttermilk flavoring and during production of a bakery mixes.

Delete the letter “a” and you’ve got a respectable paragraph, ladies and gentlemen.