The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [51]
Though emense loomed as a ridiculous spelling, I wasn’t sure, what with the yellow chalk—no, paint?—if the elixir of correction would look presentable on that. So instead of going for the big correction, we decided to start with the small. To pass our moment of waiting, Benjamin read more of the sign and noted a spot needing a comma, where items in a list slammed together. The center of the room is occupied by a snake altar, a sandpainting, religious crooks and wands carved wood figures of kachinas … I remember skimming the sentence twice, first without and then with the proposed comma, and thinking in a Trussian way about how easily, in the absence of proper punctuation, sentences can come to grief.
Benjamin nodded at me when a quick look around told him that there were fewer people around. We had little time, so we moved in, striking together. I added two white elixir marks: an apostrophe for women’s and the somewhat cosmetic comma to help prevent readers’ stumbling mid-sentence. At the same time, Benjamin, with a quick stroke of marker, wiped the author’s erroneously placed apostrophe from the sign so that no one need ever know. We stepped back, grimaced.
To the discerning eye, the two white marks stood out too boldly. While many passersby might not have noticed the coloration difference, especially in this dimly lit room, anyone looking for something amiss would certainly see it. I didn’t bother with emense. Since I had discovered that my yellow chalk wouldn’t work, I had no correction tool that could make it look good enough. We decided to be glad for what we’d gotten—we’d corrected a majority of the errors in the sign, two out of three, so we’d still get credit in the all-important tally—and head out. Then we went into that other gift shop a hundred yards down the sidewalk and corrected another typo. Now that we’d ruined the whole day-off idea, I didn’t want it to be a single-typo day, especially not after such a fine string of high-count days. That accomplished, we returned to Callie for peanut butter sandwiches before driving on to the next site, clockwise around the Canyon.
The next viewing spot was better: fewer people, no tourist shops at all, and a mere wire guardrail to keep cars from going over. We were free to wander right to the edge of a sheer cliff, lie flat upon the rock, and crawl forward so that our heads poked out over the absolute drop.
TYPO TRIP TALLY
Total found: 101
Total corrected: 63
11 | Pressed
April 2–10, 2008 (Los Angeles, CA, to San Francisco, CA)
Lights, cameras, and … typo hunt! While a new Recruit joins the ranks, and a faithful companion heads for the hills (or rather, mountains), our Crusader comes face to lens with the World of Television.
I paced beneath an umbrella resembling a peppermint at an In-N-Out Burger stand, somewhere in the cosmic sprawl of Los Angeles. In one hand I held my cell phone. In the other, a cheeseburger leaked between my fingers. An NBC producer barked at me through the tiny speaker. I was doing my best imitation of a born Angeleno: alternately bringing the phone to my ear and the burger to my teeth, hoping that I would not confuse the routine. Josh Roberts had his shades off, letting the sun soak into his freckled visage. The abundant luminosity of the West was still a new thing for him.
“Could you hold on a sec?” I said to the partially eaten burger, and I turned to Josh. “He’s playing hardass. Wants to film us before ABC, not after. Says that he called me first.”
“Tell him too bad,” Josh said. “You