google.com, pub-0038581670763948, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 My Typo Humour: 01/05/2013 - 01/06/2013

Friday, 31 May 2013

Telling porkies

There was astonishment at the sheer size of the flood devastation as reported in Australia's themorningbulletin.com.au back in January.

Here's a clip from the original article.


And here's the full article.


It wasn't until an apology which appeared the next day explaining the real situation that readers were assured that the story, albeit still sad, wasn't quite the issue they had initially been led to believe it was.

Wednesday, 29 May 2013

AWOL E

I noticed this sign in Torpoint, Cornwall earlier this week but I didn't get the chance to photograph it. So I went on Google Street View and discovered that the area must have been captured on two separate occasions.

Before, when the original sign appears to be fine.


And after. Nip across the road in Street View to find that the sun is shining, there are different cars parked outside, and the sign has been, er, improved.


Clearly it's the same business. Just different management.

Monday, 27 May 2013

Bank Holiday Punday

Here we go again with another selection to enjoy on your day off.


I tried to catch some fog but I mist.

When chemists die, they barium.

Jokes about German sausage are the wurst.

A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

I know a guy who's addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop anytime.

How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it.

I stayed up all night wondering where the sun had gone. Then it dawned on me.

This girl said she recognised me from the vegetarian club but I'd never met herbivore.

I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I can't put it down.

I did a theatrical performance about puns. It was a play on words.

They told me I had type A blood, but it was a Type O.

Broken pencils are pointless.

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Closed all hours

I came across this sign in Glasgow earlier this week.



OK, so it's closed. Permanently. I get that.

But the thing that strikes me most about it is that, when the business was open, exactly how many hours could have been fitted in the space now occupied by the Closed sign?

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

Walk right in

Spotted somewhere in Ireland.


Come on, admit it. You read it twice.

The second time with an Irish accent.

Monday, 20 May 2013

Friday, 17 May 2013

Errorists

I have to admit, this is a new one on me. But I like it.


As defined in the Urban Dictionary...

Errorist: A person who is deluded or simply stupid, making mistakes without the intention of ever acknowledging people's corrections. In fact, the common response to such corrections is often an outburst of utter ignorance, hence the play on the word terrorist. Someone who is potentially dangerous in society simply by being ignorant.

Remind you of anyone?

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

No longer mighty

In a recent article, Maureen Hayden suggested that teachers and parents fear that the digital age is putting the art of handwriting at risk.

This is how the article appeared on thedailystar.com.


That may well be true but it looks like the digital guys still have a lot to learn before they fully master their keyboards.

Because this is how the headline appeared on the mobile version.


I don't know so much.

It seems like a pretty mighty cock-up to me.

Monday, 13 May 2013

Eating on the job

Thanks very much to Keith-Marc Bradford who emailed his story to peter at mytypohumour dot com.

I had a brochure to translate for a very high-class hotel in a chateau on the Loire.

'Don't worry about proof-reading it, they said, 'the owner speaks very good English and in any case, your translation will go straight for printing, untouched by human hand. They hadn't bargained for it being touched by computer, reset into narrow columns, and for the fact that the 'logical' French rules for hyphenation differ from the pragmatic English ones.


This is what they wrote:

'Vous pouvez déjeuner sur la terrace avec vue sur la vallée.'

And this is what I translated:

'You can have lunch on the terrace looking over the valley.'

But this is what was printed:

'You can have lunch on the terrace loo-
king over the valley.'

Collapse of their elegant image!

Keith-Marc Bradford
Excel Language Services
Lankerouet
F-22420 Plouzélambre
France

Friday, 10 May 2013

Going overboard

On a recent visit to The Tall Ship at Glasgow's Riverside, Tom L and Ellie J spent half their time worrying about where they could go.


See their dilemma? What about... well, you know?

OK then, they decided. Overboard it was.

Well, as I said, they were on edge.

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

If 6 Was 9

Now if 6 turned out to be 9, like Jimi Hendrix, I don't mind.

I don't mind.

Many Irish Lotto players probably don't mind either. And who can blame them?


See the ball on the right? The Number 9 ball, drawn six times since January?

It was called out as a Number 6 last month.

Why?

Because, as well as the eleven 9s it has printed on it, it has a 6 printed on it too. Or, more likely, one of the 9s has been overlined rather than underlined, thus making it read as a 6. (Is overlined an actual word, by the way?)

Ireland's National Lotttery has done the right thing though. At a cost of around €54,000, it's paying out in both cases. So, whether you had a 6 or a 9 in your numbers, you'll win the same amount.

So, nothing to worry about. In fact, using Jimi's words again...

Play on, drummer.

Monday, 6 May 2013

Major disruption

I'm all for long-term planning but this seems to take things a little too far.


The sign was reported by CBS New York which went on to reassure the citizens of the Upper East Side that the work on the new Second Avenue Subway project is scheduled to finish in 2016.

Not bad going.

That's 997 years early.

Friday, 3 May 2013

University Centre Peterborough

Yes, I know. It's quite the oxymoron.

But, more important than that, Jon C has been playing detective. And a very good fist he's made of it, too.

Here's a poster that's being displayed in and around Peterborough advertising University Centre Peterborough which is an offshoot of Cambridge's Anglia Ruskin University.

(Hey, how's this for a new parlour game? Try and come up with the most unlikely sounding name and location for a University.)


Now, like Jon, anyone from Peterborough will know that there is nowhere in that otherwise fair city that looks remotely like this and he suspected that the photo had been taken somewhere else.

So he donned his deerstalker and dug around a bit.

Very quickly a search in Google images unearthed the photo in a German image library and Jon sought out the photographer, Tyler Olson, a Norwegian currently living in Canada.

Tyler assured Jon that the photo had been taken on a University campus. But not in Peterborough. Not even at Anglia Ruskin or Cambridge. But at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada.

That's over 4,000 miles and 8 time zones away from Peterborough.

I'm sorry, good citizens of Peterborough, but that's about as far away from Peterborough as the thought of a University in your city.

Good on you, though, for trying.

But surely there are some equally pleasant places of your own that you could have shown?

Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Fowl play

Thanks to Sarah Townsend for tweeting this one @STEcopywriting.


She doesn't say where they were on sale but I think someone's missing a trick here.

You could ship them over to Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast and sell them as souvenirs, thereby killing two brids with one stone.

No one would be any the wiser.

And yes, they certainly look tacky enough for the Brid market.

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