‘Lacross’ and other typos to bear

Letters, like grocery carts, are out of order.
A record player
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What’s up, Breeches?

In our latest collection of typos, we lead with this sign at Yellow Breeches Sports Center, just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Interstate 83 near Harrisburg.

Lax is the word that comes to mind, at once meaning “careless or negligent,” as with the spelling of “lacrosse” in this sign, and being an abbreviation for the “game of the hooked stick,” said to be translated from the Canadian French “jeu de la crosse.”)

Lacrosse has been played in Pennsylvania since the 19th century, according to Wikipedia.

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Utz Quality Foods has a rich history in its own right, dating to 1921, when William and Salie Utz started making potato chips in a Hanover, Pa., kitchen.

You can learn more Utz history as part of the self-guided tour offered at the company’s 600,000-square-foot factory in Hanover. “From start to finish, you’ll be impressed with the care we put into Utz Potato Chips,” according to the Utz website.

But not enough care went into this display at the start of the tour: incorrect use of “it’s,” short for “it is,” where you should see the possessive pronoun “its.”

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Costco Wholesale, your cart is out of order. And the letters in “inconvenience” are out of order.

And because of that, we’ll feel much less guilt for making repeated stops for free samples.

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We’re going to do you one better, Broad & Allegheny Discount, Philadelphia, and point out free of charge the two typos in your sign: It’s “hosiery” and “underwear.”

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I watched every episode in the seven-season run of “Mad Men,” marveling at the painstaking lengths to which the AMC network drama went to ensure accuracy.

From a March 2014 cover story in Time magazine:

“The office Rolo­dexes are full of real vintage cards with retro KLondike-5-style phone numbers. The coffee tables are littered with day-and-date-appropriate issues of the New Yorker and Life. If there’s a pile of papers on a desk, someone from the crew typed them—that’s typed on a typewriter, not printed on a computer.”

So was it an honest-to-goodness error or a test for us diehard viewers that, in the series’ second-to-last episode, this tow truck was identified as being in Alva, Oakla.?

The correct abbreviation for Oklahoma — which comes from the Choctaw Indian words “okla” meaning people and “humma” meaning red — is Okla.

 

About the Author

Neal Goulet

Neal Goulet, Owner
Having been a journalist, Neal knows writing, grammar and style, as well as the language and movements of a newsroom.
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