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The Dartmouth
March 28, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Alums have a mission: editing nation's typos

Benjamin Herson '02 and Jeff Deck '02 travel the nation editing typos on signs and billboards.
Benjamin Herson '02 and Jeff Deck '02 travel the nation editing typos on signs and billboards.

Deck and Herson gained media attention in 2008 when they traveled the country on a typographical error-correcting crusade, spotting and correcting as many mistakes as they could. The pair's book about their adventures, titled "The Great Typo Hunt: Changing the World, One Correction at a Time," is set to be released on August 3.

For two and a half months in the spring of 2008, Deck and Herson drove around the country finding and fixing grammatical errors on billboards and signs, Deck said in an interview with The Dartmouth. They blogged about their adventures on greattypohunt.com, posting descriptions and pictures of the typos they found, including a sign on which a Chicago business, Milwaukee Furniture, misspelled the word Milwaukee, Deck said. After reading an article about the cross-country journey in the Chicago Tribune, literary agent Jeff Kleinman contacted them and insisted they write a book, according to Herson.

Throughout their travels, the pair realized there were often larger issues underlying the grammatical errors they spotted, they said. Their book includes a chapter about the relationship between race and communication, and another about communication in the retail world. They hope "The Great Typo Hunt" raises awareness about illiteracy in the United States, Herson said.

"One of the goals of our book is to focus on possible improvements in the way that spelling and grammar are taught in the U.S.," Deck said. "A lot of [the errors] shared some characteristics that basically point to a need to change the way that spelling and grammar are taught, to focus more on a phonics approach."

The first chapter of the roughly 300-page book is set at the College during Deck's five-year reunion, when he originally had the idea to travel the country correcting typos. The book follows Deck's founding of the Typo Eradication Advancement League and the journeys he took with Herson and other friends.

When pictures of a sign Deck and Herson had corrected in Grand Canyon National Park were brought to the attention of the National Park Service, the two were summoned to appear in a federal court in Arizona and were convicted of vandalism, Deck said.

They learned the sign they had corrected was of historical significance and changing a comma and an apostrophe on the sign was illegal, Deck said.

"[The sign] looked like something a fifth grader had done as a project and the rangers had propped it up just to be nice," Herson said. "We're sorry we did it but we felt a little tricked, to be honest."

Deck and Herson received a fine and probation and were banned from entering national parks for a year, according to The Boston Globe.

The two friends now always ask permission before changing a sign, they said.