A Most Unfortunate Commencement Typo at UT Austin

We’ll let you spot the typo to end all typos. Needless to say, the school has issued its mea culpa on Twitter and started printing new commencement brochures. Now they’ll wait with bated breath to see if their goof becomes fodder for The Daily Show. We all make mistakes and then we move on. via Jim Romanesko

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Comments (16)
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  • Bated breath. Common mistake, only exacerbated by Mork’s comment, “with worm on tongue”.

  • mary says:

    Those of us library employees always fear making this typo!

  • mark says:

    I love Longhorn jokes

  • Anna says:

    Romenesko.

  • Ash says:

    Never rely on your spellchecker. They are often wrong; even when right.

  • I sent out a letter addressed to Mr Prendergast that had been changed to Mr Pederast. Bah! spellcheckers.

  • AC says:

    Yeah, you can’t blame this one on spell check.

  • deuce says:

    I sent out a letter one time, inviting the recipients to a Pubic Ceremony.

    I didn’t realize it till I got an RSVP with the letter returned, the word circled, with the comment, “I’m looking forward to seeing this”.

  • Tom says:

    Silly me.

    I thought it was a comment on Charles Whitman”s Unlimited Possibilities while target shooting unfortunate passers by from this same clock tower.

  • Brian Martin says:

    Wrong President I would have thought.

  • Kulturtrager says:

    I was directed to this story.
    It’s a non-story.
    I saw pubic instead of public; thought, oh well, mistakes happens…no big deal.

    But we need hype don’t we?

    Typo of all typos? The school uses words like’ inexcusable’, ‘deepest apologies’.

    If I was a student there I wouldn’t expect such a grovelling apology. I would expect a new booklet. That’s all that’s needed.

  • Tim says:

    I have developed a ‘safety catch’ for this (from bitter experience): Go to your ‘Autocorrect Options’ in MS Word, and tell it to automatically replace ‘pubic’ with ‘public’.

    Of course, erotic fiction writers may wish to do the opposite.

  • Ted Reynolds says:

    Whenever I refer to my acquaintance Laria in my e-mail, my spellchecker wants to change her name to “Labia”. It would be a mistake on my part to comply.

  • Christina B. says:

    I predict enrollment has sharply gone up…

  • Emery Roe says:

    Well, we all knew contemporary policy analysis and public management were in trouble, but this is hair-raising. . .

  • PropellerHead says:

    The tragic pairing of Johnson and Pubic is priceless. Man, that’s a hairy situation having to pull out and recall all those brochures! Who did they have proofread that? Some limp old one-eyed monster? Bwahahaha!

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