Speling errours

[GeoffW]

Related news from almost 19 years ago: Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia.

Vowel movements?

[BobH]

A colleague was spelling out a password for a client at a university. He specified upper case. The client asked "are the numbers upper or lower case?"

That question is not really as out of line as it sounds.

The terms uppercase and lowercase come from the days in which compositors in a printing shop set type by hand. Each letter was a separate cast metal piece that was selected from a cabinet called a case, composed of drawers of type of different sizes and fonts. In the early days of "compositing," capital letters were stored in compartments at the top of the drawer and non-capitalized letters were stored in compartments at the bottom of the drawer of characters for that font. Numbers were sometimes "case" sensitive depending on the font; therefore there was the possibility of having upper and lower case numbers.

In type setting, the compositor would choose each piece and place it in a handheld device called a stick; thus counting characters and lines was measured in sticks. And, when sticks were done they were combined on a table top that was most often a piece of granite and was thus called a stone. Printers regularly used sticks and stones, which might be why words never hurt them.

Lest anyone think that I'm trying to pull your leg, I urge you to do a little wiki searching. I know these things because 1) my dad, born in 1894, was a lifelong printer= he operated a Mergenthaler Linotype machine - and I spent many hours in the shop where he worked and saw the processes; 2) when in high school industrial arts, we had a print shop setup that included only handset type - no linotype. The type was in California Job Cases. As you would imagine, all the pieces had been mixed up - or pied - by unsupervised teenagers. Dad and I spent many a Saturday morning emptying case trays, sorting out different fonts, and replacing the pieces in their proper compartments in their proper cases and cabinets.

If you followed the link, you will have seen that the California Job Case separated capital letters from non-capital letters laterally and not vertically; but the CA job case came late to letterpress printing, else we might have had rightcase and leftcase for upper and lower cases, respectively.

[BobH]

Related news from almost 19 years ago: Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia.

Vowel movements?

But did he have to buy the vowels?

[HansV]

No, I think they were donated by Finland, which had a surplus of them.

[Rudi]

.....

[RonH]

Whilst not spelling per-say, a technical boffin that worked for me some years ago could not correct his statement made whenever he was asked if such and such was possible ...
... "definite pissabolity", he would say.
Got me into some interesting client negotiations! Maybe that will be one of the new entries in the English Collins dictionary
Ron
(apologies for mis-spell should anyone be offended)

[DaveA]

Rudi,

clothes needed hanging

Does that mean you were doing the other chores naked?

[Rudi]

Rudi,

clothes needed hanging

Does that mean you were doing the other chores naked?

When the wife is out the man is king of his domain

[Claude]

a,s, ,p,e,r, ,u,s,u,a,l,,, ,w,e, ,a,r,e, ,o,n,c,e, ,a,g,a,i,n, ,w,a,y, ,w,a,y, , ,o,f,f, ,t,o,p,i,c, ,!,

[HansV]

Watch out, Claude. Before you know it there'll be a shortage of commas in Australia...

[Rudi]

a,s, ,p,e,r, ,u,s,u,a,l,,, ,w,e, ,a,r,e, ,o,n,c,e, ,a,g,a,i,n, ,w,a,y, ,w,a,y, , ,o,f,f, ,t,o,p,i,c, ,!,

Not really if your comma laden sentence counts as a BIG spelling (or grammar) error..