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Showing posts from August, 2022

Ever Consider Writing Errors?

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There’s a recent article in The Millions that begins by giving a history lesson on “sorts” and “upper” and “lower” case. Now, this may not be something that gets you excited, but I find it fun to learn history, especially its minutiae. “How Many Errorrs Are in This Essay?” by Ed Simon is a jaunt through the history of errors of all kinds. Did you know the St. James Bible was called the "Wicked Bible" because the first printing contained the error "Thou shalt commit adultery"? Yikes. What a mistake to clean up. Books of the 17th century were created by gathering and placing miniscule "sorts" (individual letters) into frames one letter, line, and page at a time. You couldn't just leave them around gathering dust, you had to take them apart to create new pages. That means the page containing "Thou shalt commit adultery" had to be completely redone, by hand, for hours. But as they say, that's not all. The author goes into the history of huma...