Typo schmypo

It's been a long and painful process and even now I occasionally succumb to temptation, but I've learned over four years of blogging that there are certain fora in which you can be as rude, abusive and profane as you like, but the moment that -- having finally snapped at some online wanker's rudeness, aggression or abuse -- you mock someone's grammar, spelling, transcription, typing skills, or any other manifestation of ignorance or carelessness with language, you will be roundly abused for pointing out a 'typo'.

In the book of netiquette, mockery of a so-called 'typo' is somewhere well beyond defamation in the catalogue of sins and even further beyond plagiarism, which isn't considered a sin at all. The word 'typo' is short for 'typographical error' which (while technically a misnomer since it harks back to the days of lead type) is, or used to be, used in media and publishing to refer to any alphabetical or other character misplaced by mechanical accident, formerly as when one misplaced the little metal letters and now as when one tingles up one's fangers in the typing process. But the netizens to whom I refer here, who clearly don't know this and don't care, use 'typo' to mean all manner of error committed through ignorance and carelessness.

They are welcome, of course, but it is sad for them that, since they are not alert to these things, they miss so much unintended online humour. Like this most wonderful comment, comment #3, at this excellent piece on Julie & Julia: 'Stop trying to analize everything.'

That, folks, is not a 'typo'. That is a truly magnificent spelling error and an even more magnificent, if entirely unintentional, pun. It's the sort of thing that makes you hope there's an afterlife, just so that Freud can have a giggle.