The Great Typo Hunt

by Jeff Deck

  “Buy whatever you’re selling.” Spoken with the professional authority she’d swaddled herself in, using it as a flak jacket to protect her from really hearing us. Even as I tried to clarify that we weren’t selling anything at all and only wanted to point out that they’d misspelled equity (which I’d thought to be a key term for a banking institution), I could see that she’d given us her official decree. The conversation had already ended, regardless of how long we kept talking.

  “What a piece of work is man,” Benjamin began to muse. As for me, I’d done enough investigation into the knotted guts of human behavior to last me for quite a while. The time for home had come.

  TYPO TRIP TALLY

  Total found: 432

  Total corrected: 233

  * Or, depending on how Abbott and Costello judged the sensibilities of their audience during their routine, he might manifest as I-Don’t-Care or I-Don’t-Give-a-Damn.

  17 | The Welcome-Back Committee

  May 17–22, 2008 (Somerville, MA)

  Home once more, his Mission complete, still the unslakeable fires for communication Clarity blaze mightily, and new Vision begins to bubble in the cauldron of our Hero’s mind, a reaching out to all those who—actually, no, the Government has other plans.

  We took the last miles of the TEAL journey at a tear. Surely only Odysseus returning to Ithaca had experienced the depth of eagerness that I did now. The drive from Manchester to Somerville took about an hour, but felt longer. So many times had I traversed this bland stretch of I-93 on visits to my mom, but never had there been such import to my return. I had traveled nearly twelve thousand miles on my monumental circuit around the country, and now I returned to where I’d begun—albeit with a ton more stuff in the car and a short, bearded fellow in the passenger seat.

  No welcoming parade greeted us as we pulled off the highway. No flotilla of floats impeded our progress as I turned Callie onto Cherry Street. It was a cool, sunny May morning. The neighborhood looked as I had left it. My house was as gloomy and dark as it had ever been. Nevertheless, I sprang out of the car, sensing that I was different, and that I had only begun to comprehend the enigmas underlying mankind and cacography.

  We entered the silent apartment; my roommate was away for the weekend. I stood in the dim hall for a moment, my keys still in my hand, as the entire trip rushed back over me in recall. Seventy-three days of travel, more epic an adventure than I had ever undertaken. I had hunted typos through frigid snows and baking heat, in teeming cities and lonely outposts, amid mountains and plains and dreaming shores. I had put myself in various perilous situations, but none of my fears about the journey had come to pass. I had not met violence, nor lost my car to theft or the elements, and I had averted both greasy-spoon-induced E. coli and chassis-twisting calamities. Surely some higher patron of grammar had gilded my path. Then I glanced at the sloping range of mail on the foyer table and winced. The nice folks at Emory University Hospital at Atlanta apparently expected recompense for fixing my eye. Other creditors had been awaiting my return with varying degrees of patience. I had a welcome-back committee after all, it seemed.

  “Come on, man,” said Benjamin. “There’s a heap of junk in that car that we’ve gotta unload.”

  “Sorry, it’s just hard to believe that I’m back here,” I said. “And just when we got a handle on why typos happen. Too bad this is the end, huh?”

  He chose to take my query at face value. “No, we’ve still got one last hunt to do with Jane, remember?”

  We went back out to the trunk and started hauling our bags and other detritus inside. During these labors, I realized that my return was missing something, a certain crucial action that would close the circle of this journey in satisfying, Campbellian form. I checked my watch. We still had time to kill before Jane came up from Allston.

  “Why don’t we take a stroll to Davis Square?” I said, strapping on the camera and Typo Correction Kit. “There’s a score I have to settle.”

  We headed down the street, and when we came to a particular sign hanging on a particular fence, I stopped and stared it down. Benjamin whistled. “That’s the one, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the one,” I affirmed.

  NO TRESSPASSING.

  “Do it, man,” said Benjamin. “Time to drive the ruffians from the Shire.”

  I knew how best to handle this ancient foe—with the final dregs of the bottle of elixir that had served me so well in skirmishes around the nation. I uncorked it and slowly painted over the second s, not with malevolence, but with a sense of justice at last being done.

  “Tresses shall henceforth be freely passed,” I declared in ringing tones.

  We circled the Square, if that’s possible, and headed back toward my street. Jane called me then, on her walk to my house from the Porter subway station. We spotted her rolling her overnight bag behind her farther down Cherry Street, and she hid behind a telephone pole—then burst out and pelted into my arms. “You’re not gonna leave me again, right?” she said into my shoulder.

  “I’m here to stay,” I murmured back, closing my eyes and enjoying her nearness. And I would have stayed put, had the choice been up to me, but an awful destiny awaited Benjamin and me.

  Jane and I reluctantly disengaged, remembering that we had one last hunt to do. We swung by my apartment to drop off her bag and prepare for a longer outing. I’d kicked off my mission in Boston, and searched out and corrected typos in various strange territories. Now I would have to complete what my NO TRESSPASSING correction had begun, and face my own neighborhood, here north of the Charles.

  The three of us crossed into Cambridge and took a stroll down Massachusetts Avenue. Our party lent a nice symmetry, I thought, to the circuit of the League. Josh, Benjamin, and I had hunted in L.A.; Jane, Josh, and I had hunted in Seattle; and now Benjamin, Jane, and I plied TEAL’s trade here at home. The afternoon remained brisk. We strolled under a bright blue sky.

  Independent shops and eateries festooned the road down to Harvard University. We popped into them along the way, enjoying the day and browsing their wares. How this hunt contrasted to that first one I’d undertaken in Boston. Then, I had not known where to search out typos, and when I had stumbled across a few, I drew back from them, hesitant and afraid. Now we wielded our corrective tools with impunity, buttressed by the solid stone of our experiences.

  As we wandered through a craft shop, Jane asked, “Is TEAL all done?”

  Benjamin chuckled. I said that I’d like to see us go on and do more, that we ought to carefully expand our mission. I also had an interview coming up with Boston’s Fox News. This would be the last typo hunt for the trip, though, so in that sense we’d reached the end.

  “Can I help you prepare?” Jane asked, her eyes anime-wide with enthusiasm.

  “Sure. Ask me a practice question. I’m ready.”

  She maneuvered over to where Benjamin was. Though they’d only met today, they were already getting along well. He whispered something to her.

  “So,” she said, holding out an invisible microphone, “where did you guys end up finding the most typos?”

  The classic question. Everyone asked it sooner or later. “Everywhere,” I said. Starting out, I’d heard many snarky comments about where I’d be most likely to find typos, born out of stereotypes about certain sectors of America. In practice, though, we had found errors in every geographical corner and on every socioeconomic stratum. Typos were a universal, class-and region-blind phenomenon. “Pretty much everyone could use an editor.”

  “Case in point over here,” Benjamin said. Jane and I saw that his old foe, subject-verb disagreement, had returned: “… each draws like a pencil, doesn’t rub off on hands, and—amazingly—take about 10 years before it disappears.” Even here in a shop full of cleverly manufactured goods, in one of the wealthiest and most educated communities in the state, typos could still happen. I added the s to “take” and we moved on. Benjamin brushed his hands together. “Glad I got to see one last
disagreement go down.”

  Farther down the road, an extraneous apostrophe in neon vexed us, for old time’s sake. A pox on PASTA AND SALAD’S! We stared at the restaurant window, knowing that the owner would not likely replace his expensive fluorescent tubes just because we said so. “I wonder how much they paid for that,” Benjamin said.

  “Those plural apostrophes.” I sighed with mock despair. “It seems we’ll never be rid of them.”

  “Why not?” Jane asked.

  “Self-perpetuating,” Benjamin said. “Other people who aren’t confident about their apostrophe use will see this. Then they’ll be adding plural apostrophes to their own words.”

  “Viral, huh? So maybe you need a viral solution.” And like that Jane gave me an inspiration for what the League’s next move might be. She saw it in my eyes, too. “Uh-oh, bear. Why do I have the feeling I’m going to be helping you design something in Flash soon?”

  “Hmm,” I said significantly. “I wonder what that solution would look like.”

  We sat down for lunch in Harvard Square and batted around some crazy ideas for what the TEAL site—and what the League itself—could grow into. I devoured my food, barely registering it. I should have been exhausted from my travels, flinging myself back into my own bed for a marathon snoozefest. And yet, now that I was back, armed with everything I knew, I wanted to charge forth and do more. The possibilities seemed boundless and yet within the bounds of my ability. This wasn’t the end at all, more like a phase shift, or maybe our quanta ascending to the next state.

  We talked over some ideas as we ate, and agreed that today’s hunt wouldn’t be the last post. Next I’d start a contest, soliciting typo corrections. I could post entries on what counted as a typo or not, and on strategies for typo hunting—emphasizing the kinder and gentler approach, of course. We had enough ideas for at least five posts, maybe more if people began submitting their fixes.

  Having clung to one side of the street on our way down, we headed back up Mass Ave. on the other side and again ducked in everywhere. Anything to prolong and enrich that last hunt. I hooked my arm in Jane’s, and Benjamin strolled along behind us, examining our environs more carefully. For someone who’d begun the trip with no interest in the typo aspect, he was pretty intent on the mission now. He stopped us and pointed out something we’d stepped right over, a workman’s graffito on the sidewalk: TO CLOSE TO N-STAR. Benjamin took my chalk and knelt by the error, scraping in an extra o. Not quite satisfied with that, he augmented his work with marker.

  “Ahh!” Jane said as he worked. “The typo tried to get our toes!”

  “They attack from every angle. They’re everywhere.” We’d taken out many, but they remained abundant.

  “Well then, I guess you better get to work with those ideas,” she said, and I petted her arm. Despite her Hippie tendencies, I had her support. I’d explained to her via e-mail and phone how she’d helped me reshape my orthographic worldview after Benjamin and I had slugged it out in the Midwest. I wondered if I could explain my position to everyone sufficiently for both Hawk and Hippie to align themselves with me, to push for a few crucial changes in the way we approach language. E.g., that people could be their own editors, that all it took was a second look at whatever you’d written.

  “You know, Jane’s right,” Benjamin said. “There’s work to be done.”

  “Are you saying you’re in for the next phase, too?”

  Benjamin handed me back my chalk and marker. “I haven’t bought a ticket back yet. I should wait a week to head back south. We could kick things off right now. What do you say?”

  In a gift store, we came to my final typo find and correction. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it manifested as an its/it’s confusion. The typo hid in a legend accompanying a little packaged plastic gnome: THIS MYTHICAL CREATURE IS SAID TO BRING LUCK TO IT’S OWNER! The mythical creature in question would bring only grammatical confusion to its owner if I didn’t step in, so I markered out the apostrophe. Jane watched me as she played with some toys nearby.

  “What a tiny apostrophe that was,” she said. “The gnome itself looked like a giant next to it.”

  Such a tiny thing, but such a big difference it had made. The episode seemed a fitting end to our quest. Though I might have made a mistake in not buying the little garden dweller, as I could have used the luck.

  When we got back to the apartment, Benjamin hauled his bags into the living room and commandeered the couch. After blogging our finds, I concluded that last post suggesting that everyone should “stay tuned” for more to come, and over the next few days I kicked off a typo-hunting contest (offering a free TEAL shirt as a prize) and wrote posts about typos and the practice of their elimination, leading up to some bigger discussions … that circumstances would soon prevent from flowering. Benjamin and I began to put together big plans for the future of the League.

  A couple days before Benjamin left, a visitor arrived at my apartment. Jane and I were out at the time, so my roommate answered the door on that fateful Thursday morning. Benjamin sat in the living room reading Arthur C. Clarke, and overheard the interloper ask for either Jeff Deck or Benjamin Herson. Benjamin popped up and introduced himself to a tall, muscular fellow squeezed into a tan uniform that reminded him of his Boy Scout days. “Is Jeff Deck here as well?”

  “Not at the present time, but this is his place,” Benjamin answered. “I’m the one just visiting. What’s … this about?”

  The uniformed man handed over some photocopied documents, and his card. “This is about a sign you vandalized at the Grand Canyon.”

  Appalled by the man’s characterization of the act, Benjamin replied, “We corrected it.”

  “It was a hundred years old,” the ranger said.

  “Oh.” Benjamin signed that he’d officially received the documents, for both of us.

  The National Park Service was not grateful for the correction that we’d made to the sign in the South Rim watchtower at the Grand Canyon. Their response was, in fact, the opposite of gratitude. The pages, which were hasty copies of the first couple of pages of some longer, absent document, described how we had first conspired to vandalize and then vandalized a precious national historic treasure. The federal government very much desired that we travel back to Arizona in the near future for a chat with a man in a long robe. Benjamin and I had both been summoned to court, unwilling participants in a case called United States of America v. Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson. Now there was a phrase to make you soil your breeches. If the title of the case wasn’t enough to communicate the gravity of our plight, the consequences of an unfavorable verdict certainly were. Six months of federal imprisonment was one possible outcome.

  Suddenly the saga of the Typo Eradication Advancement League had taken a bleak twist. We frantically tried to figure out what to do next. Our first conclusion was that when faced with court summons, one ought to seek out some sort of representation. This went double when the plaintiff was a disgruntled federal agency. Jane promised to follow up on some meager legal connections for us. Meanwhile, I stripped the Grand Canyon entry out of the archives. Not long after that, after speaking with a couple different attorneys, I realized that I’d have to bring down the rest of the website, to avoid further self-incrimination. The shutters went dark on TEAL. Whatever plans we might have concocted for furthering our cause would have to wait—perhaps for a long time. Perhaps forever. One bad correction had the power to negate hundreds of good ones.

  Benjamin returned to Silver Spring, where he obtained a copy of the entire complaint document and forwarded it my way. It described how “law-enforcement personnel were notified of a website … which described the vandalism of a historical sign inside the Desert View Watch Tower.” The document insisted on calling me “Jeff Michael Deck” throughout, presidential-assassin style. They must have pulled my middle name from my driver’s license (though they forgot to import the rey for Jeffrey). I tried to read through the sober text, so that I could more fully understand the gra
ve charges arrayed against us. However, I couldn’t quite concentrate on the actual content. The customary scanning of my editor’s eye had uncovered much to abhor. No matter that this was a legal document, with every word presumably holding jurisprudential significance; typos had still crept in at every turn. Early in the document, Benjamin and I were said to have violated certain “criminal statues,” rather than statutes. I shuddered to visualize what violating statues would entail. Then, in a less kitschy context than explaining gnome magic, its/it’s confusion popped up: “The website describes the mission of it’s group …” Also, “this a 28 year old Benjamin Douglas Herson,” lacked some small but crucial word, plus he was from “Silver Springs, Maryland,” rather than Silver Spring. Surely the personified United-States of America, as complainant, knew the spelling of the city that was home to such important federal agencies as NOAA and the FDA.

  Attachment B

  In the face of catastrophe, some turn to drink, others to God or denial. I, apparently, fell back on proofreading.

  The last page of the document was a picture labeled “Attachment B”. It was me standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, cowboy hat on, Typo Correction Kit at my side. Someone had helpfully drawn a thick arrow across the picture, pointing at the Kit and labeling it “Package containing markers”. The smoking gun! I laughed at this picture until my sides ached.

  When I could finally manage to reread the document for meaning, it only became more perplexing. The Park Service apparently thought we’d been specifically targeting government-owned signs on our trip, and even that we’d attacked the watchtower sign specifically for its historic status. The architect of the tower, Mary Colter, had written the sign herself seventy-odd years ago. Benjamin and I had not known that, though. During the trip, we never intentionally corrected anything of historical and/or artistic value. Back at Kitty Hawk, we’d noted but never considered correcting a mistake in the picture of the newspaper edited by the Wright Brothers. In Santa Fe, I pointed out the problem of “St. Frances of Assissi” to the tour guide instead of acting on my own. In Ohio, my father had produced a clipping from his glory days of high school baseball, in which he’d pitched a no-hitter, the prize coveted by all who stand atop the mound. A mistyping had left a reference to a “hti,” but I’d held my father’s bit of history as sacrosanct. Though my eyes be keen, they can’t compare to those of an art historian, and both Benjamin and I deeply regretted our failure to recognize that the sign had belonged to that domain. The thought had just never occurred to us as we stumbled onto, in our view, an ugly little sign up the stairs from a gift shop, a sign that explained the purpose of the watchtower it occupied, but had no accompanying plaque or other indicator of its own age and value.*