By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — There’s a newsroom term for typos that Spell-Checker cannot “see” since Spell-Checker is not a human and sometimes doesn’t know its toe from its elbow.
And I’m here to tell you that there’s actually a newsroom term for these pesky little line sitters — I mean line critters — and it was coined over then years ago by C. F. Hanif in Florida. He was then an editor at the St. Petersburg Mess or was it the Tampa Cray Times?
He called these typos “atomic typos.”
My guess is that he wanted to signify that these kinds of typos that Spell-Check cannot see — and which appear more and more in sloppily-edited online websites — are so tiny and miniscule as to be almost like ”atomic” particles. So he came up with a term that you have never heard of, until now.
Embrace the atomic typo. It’s here to stay. Or maybe I should put that in the plural: They’re hear to stay. Oops! See that one? Spell-Check didn’t see it at all.
Words that are in the Atomic Typo Mall of Shame include: bowel for bowl, sedan for Sudan, ballet for ballot, unclear for nuclear. The list goes on and on, and even with all our technological prowess Spell-Check cannot process these atomic typos that are, well, weird.
County or country? Gun or gum? Flee or feel? Peace of piece? Jewry or Jewelry?
A few people have tried to invent a spell-checking platform that can “see” atomic typos, but so far nobody has succeeded. To spot an atomic typo and correct it before it goes to print, we need a pair of human eyes — and a human mind — to see the gaffes in context.
Because, you see, atomic typos are not really typos. They are in fact spelled correctly. So Spell-Check ignores them. They’re just the wrong word in the context of what the writer was actually trying to say.
Is there such a thing as a grammar-checker for word processing programs? I’m told there is, but I have not seen it in operation, yet.
If you use a grammar checker, you might be notified by the machine brain that something is wrong but it won’t and can’t tell you exactly what the atomic typo is. Only a human being, and preferably a seasoned proofreader, can figure these things out before it’s too late and the newspaper or website goes to press.
So there’s no solution to the atomic typo crisis until someone comes out with a computer that can become human and spot the wheat from the chaff — I mean “the weak from laugh.”
I have a hunch that the first person who can come up with a computer system that can “see” atomic typos and correct them in an autocorrect mini-second will earn a $1 million computing prize from some Internet giant like Gargle or Fecebook.
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is a freelance writer and inveterate web surfer. Your comment may be posted in the space provided below, or sent directly to the author at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com