From early March to late May, featured speaker Jeff Deck and three other sworn members of the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) took a road trip around America to stamp out as many typos as they could find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. They did not blame, nor chastise, the authors of those typos. It is natural for mistakes to occur; everybody will slip now and again. But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling, and the time had come for the crisis to be addressed. The League believes that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.

Deck and his traveling companions came to some startling conclusions over the course of their trip, as they discovered a wide assortment of mistakes and met with varying degrees of success in persuading people to let them fix typos. They realized that fear and apathy reign over much of the American retail sector, both of which prevented many corrections from taking place.  Many employees were afraid to authorize typo fixes due to expected retribution from their bosses; others just didn’t care enough to see justice done. The Leaguers also became aware of larger communication issues afflicting society today. People are not talking to each other even enough to point out small errors in signs. This does not bode well for problems of greater urgency.

(Before: Shepard)

(After: Shepherd)

As far as root misunderstandings behind the more common typos, TEAL thinks that a better educational philosophy for teaching spelling and grammar is needed from the start, grounded in phonics. Erroneous orthographic notions propagate like a virus—lucid education is what will keep the body of the language out of malady.

Don’t miss Jeff Deck’s featured presentation October 31 at Documentation and Training East 2008 in Burlington, MA.

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