Wed 21 Apr 2010
Tagliatelle is People!*
Posted by anaglyph under Australiana, Books, Food & Drink, Food Science, In The News, Oops!, Words
[13] Comments
The Guardian reports that publisher Penguin Australia has been left with egg on its face after it was revealed that a recipe for Tagliatelle with Sardines and Prosciutto from their book The Pasta Bible, called for the inclusion of ‘salt and freshly ground black people’. 7000 copies of the book have been withdrawn.
Penguin’s head of publishing, Robert Sessions, blamed the gaff on a spellcheck program, and said that proofreaders missed it because they were probably more concerned with checking ingredient quantities. ((Rather than the ingredients per se, I guess…)) Sessions called the mistake a typo, but I’m thinking that these kinds of episodes, where spellcheck programs offer whole alternative words to the one that is meant, should have a new name. Wordo? Hmm… a bit clunky… Suggestions?
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*Thanks to Violet Towne for spotting it in The Guardian and to my guest sub-editor King Willy for the fabulous headline.
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Spell chuck?
There is rather a lot more discussion of this over at Language Log. There you will find much grist for the mill.
Oh, and the problem of a spell-checker mis-correcting is called a “cupertino”.
How about Kookaburra? Declaim, disclaim…
The ‘Cupertino effect’ seems to be the accepted term for the phenomenon. Boring though…
Oh I love that photo! Is that by Violet Town?
No – big site problem. That’s a default image. Am fixing all as we speak.
The problem of a spell checker miscorrecting is a “cupertino”? Doubly hilarious that a function of MS’s clunky programming should yield such a clunky neologism *and* that said clunker should be the headquarters of a competitor.
A new word? A “fulex” springs to mind, but my mind is obviously lame today. I’ll stick with fubar, which pretty much has it covered.
Looks like you made a typo somewhere in your theme’s code, Rev :D
MMMMMMM – Black People
I think my avatar has taken homeopathy awareness week to heart
No – for irritating reasons all the code for TCA has changed and I’m trying to bring it back into some semblance of order. The implementation of Gravatars is different and so some of you will be experiencing loss of your icon. It will take me a lot of tinkering to get back to where I was.
Cissy Strutt: ‘Spell chuck’ I like. Or ‘spell cheek’. There’s an implication of a cretin kind of artificial intelligence…
King Willy: I’ll except that.
Stilgherrian: Thanks for the Language Log link. Funny. As for the ‘cupertino’… well, even though I can see the amusement of it, it’s still not something that’s going to catch on in a curry…
Atlas: You say tomtom, I say tomahawk.
JR: A bit of a contrivance methinks. It doesn’t really roll off the tongs.
Digs: A clunker for sure… but perhaps apt. Fubar? Snafu? Inconceivable!
Malach: I’m surprised you even noticed the mince steak.