Sunday, October 15, 2023

windows and orphans: two centuries of typos

Ipswich Journal 7 August 1736 p. 3


Dunlop and Claypoole's American Daily Advertiser 13 May 1784 p.3


Lancaster Gazette 22 February 1845 p. 3

Devon and Exeter Gazette 22 May 1845 p. 3

True Democrat 14 October 1852 p. 1

Lawrence Daily Journal 16 July 1876 p. 2

Lancaster Excelsior 27 May 1910 p. 1

Evening Mail 4 February 1920 p. 3

Corsicana Daily Sun 4 January 1935 p. 16

Lewiston Daily Sun 15 June 1948 p. 7

The Standard-Star 6 March 1967 p. 4

Evening Standard 28 August 1980 p. 7

... and so on. A search on this phrase turns up 2, 825 mentions, though a lot of them are (1) actually about windows on orphanages - or similar (2) the two words in separate articles on the same page (3) syndicated stories, oddly enough, since you'd think each newspaper would have to have them typeset individually at least until 40 or so years ago. 

I'm just thrilled to think of all the ribbing compositors must have endured over centuries from this benign error. Probably a few of them were somewhat mortified, most of them probably shrugged. It's obviously less horrific than a mistake like, I don't know, writing No in a box in a referendum when you should have written Yes. There's many millions of Australians today who should be far more regretful. (I wasn't going to go there, I couldn't help it).  

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