Archives: The World Wide Web

Sure, the web is full of typos and grammatical errors. I can understand typos on personal pages... but on professional sites?!

Image server memory: 5.8 seconds; Height: 256 tones; Tray Capacity: 128MB; etc. New! — found by 'ingsoc' at Worse Than Failure: This one's just unbelievable. A rather...interesting set of specifications for a multifunction printer from Canon, still uncorrected on Canon's site as of July 29, 2007.
Edison Labratory, Menlo Park, NJ New!: A caption from the online game that accompanied NBC's 2006 reality show "Treasure Hunters". Labratory... is that where lab rats are kept?
1 pound supermarket's refrigerator or freezer section, divided into 4-ounce pieces New! — found by spicysaurus: That's going to make an awfully inedible pizza. From this Rachael Ray recipe on Yahoo, still uncorrected as of July 1, 2007.
2005 Champion Anurag Kashyup: Found on the National Spelling Bee web site on June 5, 2004. For the record, the winner's name is spelled 'Kashyap'. Now that's irony.
General populice — found by anaxareteia: Found in the entry for 'Middle America' on thesaurus.com. Populice... does that mean lousy people?
Athens and the unversity in 1840: The University of Georgia: Like 7-Up, it's the un-versity!
Your phone is on it's way!: It's interesting how this particular error in this particular phrase keeps popping up; see also The Core and AIM. This time, it's from an order confirmation from Virgin's US mobile phone service.
...questions about the student's parents': Government legalese on the FAFSA is made even harder to parse thanks to repeated misuse of apostrophes.
On it's way!: I guess the screen shot from The Core isn't too far off from reality, as evidenced by this screen shot from the AOL Instant Messenger web site.
Misson Not Accomplished — found by mindme: It's since been corrected, but the Democratic National Convention had quite an embarrassing typo in this graphic on their site.
Fist Look: Star Wars DVD Packaging: Gotta love prominent typos in images on major web sites; this one's from StarWars.com. Also note how "Wars" is italicized but "Star" isn't.
First-year, Second-year Gradudate Student: From an online questionnaire by the makers of the Graduate Record Examination... or, should I say, the Gradudate Record Examination.
Battistoni to Lecture on Civic Engagment Day: This headline was posted on Mercer University's website in early 2004. Engag me with a spoon!
Mistakes happens. — found by tancaliel: As this screen shot from the Yahoo Messenger site shows, mistakes do indeed happen, at least with respect to subject-verb agreement.
We are exited and proud... — found by Catherine Miller: From an article about a scholarship given to the spelling bee contestants featured in the movie Spellbound. The irony here is just astounding.
Flying Solo? Maybe Your A Loner: Spotted on AOL Instant Messenger's 'Today' screen some time in mid-2003. How did this get past the proofreaders?
...the cool, trendy styles your looking for: An actual promotion displayed on JCPenney.com some time in 2003. How did they not notice this?
Take the walktrough tour: Walktrough? Sounds rather unappealing to me.
I would of hoped...AID was working with a secure severer — found by LuckyWizard: So much wrong here, I don't know where to start. "Would of"? "Severer"? "One officer who was named"?
Using matrix transforms to add exitement to your Web pages — found by LuckyWizard: From the Microsoft Developer Network website. Honestly, you'd think they'd be able to afford a better proofreader, wouldn't you?
Best and brighest — found by Ari Goldstein: From an article on the Fox Sports web site.
If you don not see...: From the official Terminator 3 web site. I didn't know Don Knotts had any part in it! :-)
Get your own webiste — found by Nyperold: Spotted in the advertisement area that is attached to all Angelfire member pages. I'll admit that the typo has a rather French sound to it. Je suis un webiste...
It's Simply... — found by Randy: A message posted on the University of Nevada's site at some time in the past. Apparently "simply" has now become an adjective.
San Serif — found by Nyperold: A double whammy: first of all, it's "sans serif", and second of all, that's not a serif font.
Defualt Ad — found by Nyperold: Wow. A double whammy; not only could they not configure the script correctly, the error message is also misspelled.
...in a bequtiful manner — found by Sosiqui: From CandyDirect.com. Was this typed by someone accustomed to the French AZERTY keyboard layout, I wonder?
Lobster, Oyster, Clamps... — found by MimeInAShoebox: From thebountyrestaurant.com. Ouch. Clamps. Wouldn't eating those rather hurt one's jaw?
Comtemporary, sous ched, seafoos, accouts — found by MimeInAShoebox: From a page on Guam.net. Perhaps there's a need for more proofreaders on Guam?
0h, give thyself the thanks... — found by Sosiqui: Shakespeare, unwittingly given the h4x0r treatment by BlueMountain. (And incidentally...Sonnet 38? I'm amused.)
Were such good friends... — found by Sosiqui: From a BlueMountain e-card. I suppose this implies that the sender and receiver aren't such good friends anymore; amazing how sloppy proofreading can break up a relationship so easily, eh?
...Indentify School Districts... — found by yanz38: If TheSchoolReport.com could "indentify" the school system from which its proofreader graduated, that would be really nice...
...more preciesely tailored web content — found by MimeInAShoebox: A caption-- stored in graphical form, no less-- on the web site for LiveWorld, the marketing division of TalkCity.
Take a break and excercise your brain... — found by Amy Goldstein: Go figure. It's a web page on Real.com promoting a word game. How ironic, indeed.
Hailing a cab on online — found by Sosiqui: First it's "goto to" on Yahoo Webring; now this from MSNBC. Will the redundancy ever end?
Hotmail Chain Letter 1
Hotmail Chain Letter 2 — found by Marvin: Yes, we know these aren't official Hotmail notices. What gives it away? Eh, we'll start with the sloppy proofreading...
Goto to here: A new standard in redundancy! Also note the rather unusual spelling of "creatd"; perhaps they were influenced by the band Staind...
Chapter uploading are not longer allowed — found by Nyperold: An error message displayed at fanfiction.net. Is it just me, or does this reek of Engrish?
Dobgert — found by MimeInAShoebox: Similar to the Nescape typo featured elsewhere in this section, here's another official site which can't spell its own trademark. (For the record, it's supposed to be Dogbert.)
Advanced Managed Hosting of Tommorow: An error spotted on HostRocket.com, which has since been corrected; however, for those who wish to look, there are still numerous other instances of sloppy proofreading on the page even today.
Nescape Web Sites: This ad was spotted, of all places, on netscape.com. It's a shame when a company can't even spell its own name right, eh? (And is it just me, or does this typo remind anyone else of Nescafé?)
The United States celebrates it's 225th birthday: Spotted on July 4, 2001, on Excite's now-defunct broadband portal.
You can write HMTL... — found by Nyperold: Apparently this is some new variation of HTML that I haven't yet heard of.
The posting you we're trying to read... — found by JP Balletta: Perhaps the most unusual placement of an apostrophe that we've ever seen, spotted in an error message at Teen.com.
...select a valid option before continue — found by Nyperold: An error message found on cartogra.com when you click on the "continue" arrow without selecting a photo.
Grammy nomininees: Pererhaps the MP3.com webebmaster hadad a slight stututter.
Quailty — found by Sakura: To quote the submitter, "Heh. I wouldn't expect very high 'quailty' from a server with a typo like that on their page..."
...tried to dowload... — found by Nyperold: First spotted in Microsoft Reader, this typo has since been found on an error page on GamingDepot.com. Typosis is contagious!
Spelling knwledge: I was quite amused when I noticed this typo on MSNBC's web site, considering the subject of the article.
Working dilligently — found by Nyperold: As the contributor suggests, MP3.com must have really been in a pickle...
There are 1 user — found by Nyperold: According to the contributor: "A message you get when you enter a previously empty chat room powered by Multicity.com. At least, I think so, as there are only 1 Multicity-powered chat room that I've been in..."
A free Hotmail account let's you...: From a logon screen on msn.com. Was this written by the same people as the SimCity manual shown in the Video Games section?
Scrippps
declard: Two typos which appeared on an earlier version of the National Spelling Bee homepage. [The curator of the Hall of Shame pointed these typos out to the Spelling Bee webmaster...]
Its free!: From the log-on screen for Yahoo Games.
oringinal / your are — found by Nyperold: A not-so-helpful hint displayed on Altavista's Babelfish translator, sure to produce an imperfect translation when run through Babelfish.
Need nore information? — found by Nyperold: An ad which appeared on Netscape's SmartDownload utility. I couldn't decide whether to put this in Ads, Software, or Web; I need nore time to think about it.
futher / comman — found by Tubba: From a British ISP's troubleshooting page. Perhaps they should start proofreading "futher" so that they'll notice some fairly "comman" mistakes.