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Did spell-check cause this amusing New York Times correction?

avatar by Published Apr. 11, 2012 4:00 pm

I’m awaiting confirmation, but this funny New York Times correction appears to be an example of spell-check gone awry:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Ethiopian dish doro wot as door wot. Additionally, the article referred incorrectly to awaze tibs as aware ties.

Perhaps a copy editor was too heavy with the “change” button when spell-checking?

What’s interesting is that Slate cited this as an auto-correct mistake when tweeting the link:

Chalk it up to the ubiquity of autocorrect errors in text messages, I guess.

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  • David Blum

    Aware ties are the latest fashion innovation for the Silicon Valley set.

  • tg

    Funny that the NY Times will actually bypass all proofreaders and get an mistake in there. 

    But you know what?  For good spell checking, you also need to have a dictionary built into the spell checker.  This allows for a person to check if the word being offer is the actual word he or she is thinking about.

    A good spell checker I use, that has a dictionary built in, is Spell Check Anywhere.

    This program adds spell checking to all Windows programs.  It also offers better spell checking than even Word’s spell checker.  And it works in all of Windows programs.  I am happy with it.

  • Anonymous

    Craig, this might have something to do with what CF Hanif at the Palm Peach Post (atomic typo! should be Beach!) referred to in 2005 as an ”atomic typo” and there is now a website devoted to tracking down these atomic typos. According to Hanif, who is no longer oped page editor there, and now works as an imam in Florida, good story here too, atomic typos are typos that spellcheck cannot SEE, such as unclear vs nuclear, Sudan vs sedan, Governor Christ vs Governor Crist, things like that. They are called atomic typos I believe because they are so small and miniscule so as to be perceived like atomic particles? Not sure. But this door wot thing could be an atomic typo CASE gone wild. or an atomic typo CHASE gone wild, or an atomic typo chase case with CHILD. See? MORAL HERE: never trust your
    spellchecker, always employ a human BEAN!