Ever Consider Writing Errors?

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 human error. How about this? 

"When the physician Alexander Fleming left out a culture plate which got contaminated, and he noticed the flourishing of a blue mold that turned out to be penicillin—that was a mistake."

Think about all those mistakes you've made. Well, some of them had to be for the better, right? I mean, not penicillin right, but maybe a decent omelet right. 

The author also discusses the importance of punctuation. Remember that cover that said "Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog"? For want of a comma, Rached Ray became a cannibal.

There are also serendipitous mistakes like the Honus Wagner baseball card showing him smoking, a card that he wanted destroyed because apparently he didn't smoke. Well, one of undestroyed cards recently sold at auction for $6.6 million. 

The author does some puzzling over why we commit mistakes, or make an occasional slip of the tongue. There could be some deep psychological happenstance happening.

"If writers make mistakes, explore mistakes, celebrate mistakes, and embrace lives that are mistakes, they also can use mistakes," Simon says, and he gives us the history of writing by mistake. 

This article is a whirlwind tour of errata, mistakes, and the pschological need to make those mistakes.

What mistakes have you made that were done accidentally on purpose?