10 HUGE Printing Errors That Will Make You Grateful You Proofread
10 HUGE Printing Errors That Will Make You Grateful You Proofread
Proofreading is the final step before printing or submitting a piece of writing. You should proofread your text to check for spelling or grammar errors or any sentences that don’t make sense. Sometimes you might miss the odd misspelling or wrong word – so it’s always worth getting a second person (a fresh set of eyes) to proofread. These people learnt the hard way when they skipped the proofreading part of printing:
A 400-year-old bible went on sale in 2015 for £15,000 due to a missing word. You might be thinking – why so much for one small error? Well, the missing word changed the whole meaning of one of the ten commandments. Instead of printing “Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery’ the copies that were printed in 1631 actually read “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery”. It is still speculated whether it was a genuine error by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the Royal Printers who printed these copies, or a rival sabotaging the copies. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11946237/Bible-that-says-Thou-shalt-commit-adultery-goes-on-sale.html
A misprint that might make you hungry – Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy (First Edition) contained a laughable error. “harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music – like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea”. As much as we like chips, we are sure the image of “two small ships” would be more suited to the book. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/01/top-5-embarrassing-misprints
Happy Holidays – or not for The Guardian who, in 1980, printed their Christmas cards with a glaring spelling mistake. They read: “Best wishes for Chistmas and the New Year”. Fortunately, the error was spotted before they were sent out, so all the cards were scrapped and re-printed. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/01/top-5-embarrassing-misprints
A New Mexico car dealership made a very expensive printing error when it sent ‘Lottery Scratch Cards’ to 30,000 customers offering them the chance to win $1,000. The dealership was inundated with calls claiming to have won the grand prize – only to discover that a printing error had meant that every card was a winner. Yikes! To apologise for the error the dealership gave every customer a $5 gift card (Costing £15,000 in total). I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the $1,000. http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/23/n-m-honda-dealer-scratches-bungled-sweepstakes/
We’re not sure The New York Post understands the rules of football – in 2010 they printed a news headline about a football match between England and the US. The headline read “USA Wins 1-1”. Surely this is a tie?... http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/06/york-post-world-cup-match
A mistake carved in stone. Have you visited the Lincoln memorial in Washington or are you planning to? Well if you look closely, part way through the second Inaugural Address on the north wall you will notice something odd. The engraver who completed the memorial accidently carved the word ‘Future’ with a E rather than an F. To try and rectify the mistake they filled in part of the letter – but if you look carefully you can still see it. http://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/typo-lincoln-memorial/
As babies, we begin to learn our own name and when we begin to write it’s one of the first things we practice. So not surprisingly we rarely get our name wrong. Well, apart from Valley News who accidentally printed their newspaper with the title “Valley Newss” - the newspaper printed an apology and took all the blame! http://www.oddee.com/item_97261.aspx
Have you ever been stuck with what to write next, so you hopelessly bang the keyboard wishing that some sort of inspiration will appear. This is what newspaper Times & Citizen did, but they never got to the inspiration part and also forgot to delete the outburst of letters on their front page headline leaving the headline as ‘Headline headghgh’. http://gawker.com/5555487/british-newspaper-has-given-up-on-writing-headlines-entirely
As shown by Valley News, names can be hard to get right. Unfortunately for Pastor Dick Bigeblow, the Argus Observer found this out the hard way and accidentally printed his name as ‘Pastor Dick Bigblow’. They printed an apology stating that they regretted the error – I bet they did! http://www.oddee.com/item_97261.aspx
We’ve seen expensive mistakes, but nothing compared to this. A large proportion of the 650,000 2015 £2 coins still in circulation today were printed with the text upside down! If you happen to find one of these coins, hang onto it – they can be worth up to £350 when sold at the right time. http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/glaring-error-means-rare-2-9645738
Don’t let printing errors get the better of you, double or triple check your work and get a fresh set of eyes to check it over, before printing.
As well as spelling and grammar it is important to check your artwork, sizes and colours. Here at The Printing House we cast our eye on all artwork when you print with us. (We check for common mistakes such as bleed and poor image quality, but not for spelling and grammar). Interested? Read more about this on our blog here.