The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time [Hardcover]

Jeff Deck (Author), Benjamin D. Herson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 3, 2010

The signs of the times are missing apostrophes.
 
The world needed a hero, but how would an editor with no off-switch answer the call? For Jeff Deck, the writing was literally on the wall: “NO TRESSPASSING.” In that moment, his greater purpose became clear.  Dark hordes of typos had descended upon civilization… and only he could wield the marker to defeat them.
 
Recruiting his friend Benjamin and other valiant companions, he created the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL). Armed with markers, chalk, and correction fluid, they circumnavigated America, righting the glaring errors displayed in grocery stores, museums, malls, restaurants, mini-golf courses, beaches, and even a national park. Jeff and Benjamin championed the cause of clear communication, blogging about their adventures transforming horor into horror, it’s into its, and coconunut into coconut.
 
But at the Grand Canyon, they took one correction too far: fixing the bad grammar in a fake Native American watchtower.  The government charged them with defacing federal property  and summoned them to court—with a typo-ridden complaint that claimed that they had violated “criminal statues.” Now the press turned these paragons of punctuation into “grammar vigilantes,” airing errors about their errant errand..
 
The radiant dream of TEAL would not fade, though.   Beneath all those misspelled words and mislaid apostrophes, Jeff and Benjamin unearthed deeper dilemmas about education, race, history, and how we communicate. Ultimately their typo-hunting journey tells a larger story not just of proper punctuation but of the power of language and literacy—and the importance of always taking a second look.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Deck is a man on a mission. From greasy spoon menus to national park signs, he and his cohorts (including co-author Herson) road trip around the nation looking for, and attempting to correct, spelling mistakes, misplaced apostrophes, and other small but apparently significant abuses to the English language. While Deck and friends approach their trip with a good sense of humor, early chapters feel prosaic. Before departing Deck contemplates the "madness" of the endeavor. Is correct commas from a car really all that wild? And surely we could have done without the litany of bear-related pet names Deck's girlfriend often employs when addressing him. Given that most readers drawn to this book will already share the authors' penchant for consistent and "proper" language, more substantial exploration of their evolving motivation would have been stimulating. Deck and Herson speed past questions of race, class, dialect, and education that their quest inherently raises. While the moments of human interaction run from tender to hostile, the end result doesn't add up to more than the sum of its anecdotes. Though the many snapshots included (often in the "before and after" vein, showing the fruits of their labor) add welcome humor.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Indie Next List, "Great Reads from Booksellers You Trust," August 2010

Boston Globe Bestseller

"[THE GREAT TYPO HUNT], where editor meets road trip, is entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking, and one that any lover of language, travel — or both — will probably enjoy."
—The Boston Globe

"[A]n illuminating hybrid of travelogue, English usage textbook and sociological experiment."
—Washington Post

"[C]omplete with breezy writing, mock superhero prologues, and a serious mission to return phonics and proofreading to places of honor."
—Christian Science Monitor

"Part classic road-trip narrative, buddy-love saga and state-of-the-nation survey, it's also an adventure thriller for grammar fiends, travel porn for copy editors and other enforcers of linguistic propriety."
—Philadelphia Inquirer

"Deck and Herson show the reader that adventures in language needn’t be limited to the computer screen or printed page. In their view, the real excitement’s out there on the open road, and they want you to share it."
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

"[B]reezy and fun....most interesting when it delves into issues of class and race...and in its discussion of the plasticity of the English language."
—Salon.com

“This pair of kooks, with their high standards and principled civil disobedience, give me hope for the future of humanity.”
—Steven Pinker, Harvard College professor, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct and The Stuff of Thought
 
“A compelling read! Deck and Herson have brilliantly combined the exploratory curiosity of the travel writer, the human interest of the story-teller, and the explanatory detail of the language specialist into an original, humorous, and engaging narrative. Anyone interested in language standards, attitudes, and education should read this enticing book.”
—David Crystal, author of Just a Phrase I'm Going Through and By Hook or By Crook: a Journey in Search of English

“Only Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson could make the complete decline of the English language so entertaining. It's heartening to accompany these two young men on their quixotic quest to identify and rehabilitate the typos, spellos, and prepostrophes that threaten to bring down civilization as we know it.”
—Richard Lederer, author of Anguished English

“With sly humor and pitch-perfect tone, Jeff and Benjamin take us on a hilarious ride in a '97 Sentra around the U.S.A. in search of malapropisms and misprints on everything from menus to marquees, bumpers to billboards.  It's a spell-checker's On the Road, a Strunk & White Odyssey, a charming Travels with My Dictionary with two young men who start as linguists and end as friends.”
—Michael Malone, author of Handling Sin and The Four Corners of the Sky
 
“In this seriously funny--and seriously thoughtful--book, a simple typo hunt becomes something more: an investigation into the deeper mysteries of orthographical fallibility. To err is human; to correct, divine!”
—Patricia T. O'Conner, author of Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English

“A funny and obsessive adventure that any language lover will appreciate.”
—David Wolman, author of Righting the Mother Tongue:  From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1ST edition (August 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307591077
• ISBN-13: 978-0307591074
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Boisterous Grammar Adventure August 3, 2010

By Jennifer Olsen

Format:Hardcover

The Great Typo Hunt is the hilarious tale of the adventures and misadventures encountered on a quixotic cross-country trek to correct grammar and spelling mistakes. Over-the-top heroic tone and witty wordplay make this book endlessly amusing, without detracting from the larger point the authors are trying to make about the importance of clear and coherent communication. An overall fun read that will change the way you look at typos.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great American Quest September 14, 2010

By R. Hardy HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

For me, it's the plural with an unnecessary apostrophe. The sign at the grocery says: "Apple's." I notice the mistake, sigh, and pass by. Not Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson, though. They are the founding members of TEAL, the Typo Eradication Advancement League, helpful strangers (call them "grammar vigilantes" at your peril) who wander into town, spot the signs with misspellings or bad punctuation, and make corrections. They did this as a mission throughout our land, traveling from one coast to another with their trusty Wite-Out, chalk, pens, crayons, and dry-erase markers of every hue. Sometimes the strangers got a thank you for their helpful corrections. Sometimes they got scorn. And one set of corrections was made into a federal case against them. The rousing, funny, and instructive story is told in _The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time_ (Crown Publishers), written in Deck's first person but with both credited as authors. In 2007, a college reunion got Deck to thinking about what he had accomplished in his life. He had just returned from his five-year reunion at Dartmouth College, embarrassed by his lack of post-graduate accomplishment; he had been an editor, and an administrative assistant for an office that studied climate change, but he wasn't having much effect on the world. And then, walking outside his apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, he got a sign: "PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO TRESSPASSING" it said. He'd seen it before, but that extra S hadn't bothered him so much. "What if I were to step forward and do something?" he asked himself.

The answer: "Typo hunting was the good that I, Jeff Deck, was uniquely suited to visit upon society." (The mock heroic language breaks in frequently, emphasizing and at the same time deprecating the quest.) Initially, they made some "stealth corrections," changes on signs made without permission. During the quest, however, they realized that this was not a fair way to make a change nor to educate; the TEAL position is that changes can be made only after asking permission. It doesn't always work. In a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, "Gorganzola" was listed on a chalkboard menu, a small error that would have been easily repaired by simply rubbing out the little tail on the "a" to make it an "o." But they get a response that is literally, "So who says it is wrong?... Why should I fix it? Because you say so?" The manager does not accept the need for a change, and says with sarcasm in farewell, "We'll be _sure_ to take care of that for you." Often, however, the correctees were agreeable and even appreciative. "All I had to do was ask," Deck declares of many of his encounters. In a tourist trap in Arizona, they can't do anything about a typo in a neon sign ("I didn't have any spare glass tubing handy for the rechanneling of inert gases"), but a sign in the window of the restaurant offered "stawbery," "lemonaide," and decafinated coffee." The server at the restaurant was grateful that the boys were going to fix the sign themselves, but had to be reassured that she would not be charged for the service. A shoe store sign said that it was "Now in it's 16th year," and it had said that for so long that the dry-erase marker had become unerasable. The boys are delighted when the employee to whom they showed the correction borrows a marker from their Typo Correction Kit, and turns the offending apostrophe into a little star, and makes other little stars around the sign. "Dude," said Herson, "that was freaking amazing." In New Orleans, a blackboard outside a restaurant mentioned "Thrusday" and the employee to whom they showed it was amused, as was the one who chalked the error, as were other employees. They were amused, too, to learn of the mission of TEAL, and not only did they have a good laugh about it all, they gave the boys a prize for pointing out the mistake, a bumper sticker that said "Time flies when you're having rum."

The authors succeeded in being polite in all their exchanges; this may be because of a self-effacing attitude that charmingly shows up in Deck's episodic doubts of the value of his mission. The big issues take the book out of the category of picaresque lark. What if English is always changing and there are no pure forms? Should grammarians be interested in legislating what forms are good or bad, or should they be content with describing how people are using English to get their points across? Questions of how we learn and how we communicate get taken in stride. When Deck gets to wondering not only what difference does a little apostrophe out of place make, but what difference can TEAL make in the larger picture of good grammar and a better-organized cosmos, Herson reassures him that a typo mistake "... is a controllable thing that reflects on the store..." That, and good punctuation means clearer communication, and while an apostrophe out of place might not even be noticed by the majority of viewers, it cannot help in a sign's effort to get communication across. The costly federal case against the crusaders does not dismay them, and after a legally-enforced year of hibernation, they are back at work, and enlisting others to help. They have learned that typos can be found in every section of the country, in all socioeconomic levels; there is no real pattern: "Everyone can use an editor," they say. There is a pattern of errors, though, with that unnecessary apostrophe being the most frequent, followed by the necessary apostrophe which has been omitted, followed by the classic confusion of "its" and "it's." You will come away from this book with a better understanding of the errors, and perhaps less of a tendency to make them yourself. There is little judgmentalism here, and just a little didacticism, and a great deal of mirth along the road. It's a trip worth taking.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Travel and Grammar Fun August 16, 2010

By degracia01

Format:Hardcover

The Great Typo Hunt is a fantastic read that honestly had me laughing out loud at times (usually on a crowded bus or train). It's a road trip story of two friends who have a crazy idea: drive around the country correcting typos. Their adventures and the typos they find along the way not only make you laugh but also make you want to cry at what some of these mistakes say about the American population. They found over 400 typos on their trip and learned a lot about society along the way. A part that really resonated with me was when they discussed people's innate fear of looking stupid. Many people along the way would rather leave the sign incorrect then admit that they had made an error. They discussed how people sometimes limit their written vocabulary in an attempt to hide their lack of understanding about spelling and grammar. As a young child I remember being told that I could never be smart because I was a bad speller. An even now, as an adult with an BA from an Ivy league institution and an MBA from one of the top business schools in the country, I still find myself dumbing down emails, texts, Facebook posts, and even book review posts in an attempt to hide my inability to spell. That section not only shook me to the core but made me realize that I was not alone. Trust me, something about this book will resonate with you. And if nothing else, you will certainly understand proper apostrophe usage and you will become aware of the immense amount of typos that exist in the written text you pass by every day. If you like travel, adventure, or even grammar, this book is a great read and will have you discussing it with friends for days.