In the past fifteen years or so, I've also noticed that a lot more errors are showing up in print - newspapers and magazines. I attribute this to reporters' use of direct terminals to write stories. In less technological times, the editor and, perhaps, a number of copyreaders (copyboys in the old days - think Jimmy Olsen) had a chance to catch the obvious slips. As a last bulwark against typos, or sometimes a last source of them, were the human typetters who ran the Linotype machines. I can sympathize with the author at the source; At one point in my life I taught college composition and wallowed daily in the dregs of bad writing.

In recent years, I've become more prone to typos thanks to nerve damage from an injury, and am mortified when a mistyped item escapes my notice before I click on the 'done' button. Hence, Jorjor's Law:

Intelligent people make typographical errors; stoopid peepul dont no hau too spel.

Funny dat

At the risk of appearing slightly mercenary (hangs head low), other peoples poor grammar and/ or spelling can work to your advantage on auction sites such as Ebay.

Most people, or at least a reasonable percentage of them will search for items using the correct spelling leaving those sellers who misspelt etcetera scratching their heads why their item(s) remain unsold.

So the next time you go on one of these sites try deliberately misspelling your search query (including possible speed typos), while it won't always work it can sometimes throw up ridiculous bargains simply because not many people were looking for a "Dogital Camera" or whatever.

Happy hunting folks.

Go back to the source or just link through the clip, Infowarrior. That's what Typo Buddy is for. It searches for variant spellings of what you're looking for.

In a past phase of my life, I designed an input interpretation system for answers typed in to computer versions of the game shows Jeopardy, Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune. It took into account common misspellings and typos, so as not to penalize players who knew the answer but weren't world class typists or spelling bee finalists.

Well, SMS killed a lot of good intentions...