Ingredients: Salt and Ground Black People

[Daniel Rogov]

Sent to me by one of my most faithful of correspondents, an article from BBC news in which a proof-reader's goof made Penguin shred some 7500 copies of their pasta book in order to print. The goof - in one recipe instead of calling for salt and ground black pepper the ingredients listed were "salt and ground black people".

I'm quite sure this was an innocent error. Thinking of myself and how many times I have too quickly typed, for example, "Fiasco" instead of "Falesco"; appelation instead of appellation; Cabernet Salvignon instead of Cabernet Sauvignon; or of "drink now until 1009".

Simply stated good language editors, for whom all writers pray, are gifts from the gods and bad language editors have come straight from the sixth level of hell.

See the article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8627335.stm

Best
Rogov

[Francois de Melogue]

Damn it, I had already ground up the black people then I saw this! Rogov, you really ought to post like this faster... now what should I do with the ground up BP? Taste great, less filling! Try new ground up White People! For spice in your life try the all new Ground Up Cajun People!

Ha, great story... Grimod

[Shel T]

So on a scale of 1-10...just how uptight and over-sensitive are the mentally/emotionally challenged over a typo...LOL about 150!

[Trevor F]

The recipe wasn't written by George Bush Jr was it ?

I've seen many misprints on restaurant menus, particularly when translated in to English, like ' scarp ' for escalope or 'ramsons' . What are ramsons ?

My own favourite brand of quoted misprints are verbal misquotes known in English as ' Colemanballs ' named after a famous sports commentator, who, when talking fast, mangled his English coming out with several malapropisms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemanballs. A joy to read.

[Matilda L]

A human proofreader would have picked this up .... spell-checkers don't.
The establishment I used to work for once sent a major budget paper up to the Big Cheese full of stuff about the cost of laying landmines between our campus and that of the neighbouring establishment. The author meant "landlines" but the spellchecker didn't know the difference and there was an absence of human proofreading on that occasion too.