If you’re a computational linguist, the sentence that your boss never wants to hear from you is this: we need to spend six months writing a program to fix the spelling errors in this @#$@#$% data. And yet: spelling errors or similar sources of unexpected inputs are a problem with every domain of computational science that I’m aware of. Even super-highly-edited text has some residue of spelling errors and other problems. For example, back in the days when there were still phone books, even they had a non-zero rate of spelling errors. Not a high rate–but, not zero, either.
You don’t really believe that even when people are paying really, really, really close attention to how they write, they still screw up? Read on. I’ll come right out and admit that I’m not sure what the first word is in the picture below, but that’s not even what I’m talking about…
Zipf's Law 
The sentence is a common expression, that’s how I can be sure in spite of the difficult writing . “Arrête-moi si tu peux” . I’m not sure there are mistakes, the last letter might be an artistic “X, at least I hope, and besides we can think they did not want to add a circumflex and a hyphen .
LikeLiked by 1 person
I never thought about the need (or lack thereof) to punctuate tattoos. Or the problem of proofreading them. I also never thought about the problems of proofing the phone book. But I will tell you that on my partner’s father’s gravestone, his name was misspelled. It happens often enough that they had a way to fix it without starting over.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Of course, being English I am conditioned to suggest that Americans can’t spell 😉
LikeLiked by 3 people
Et tu Osyth? 😉 As a North American, although of obviously superior heritage having grown up north of the border singing God Save the Queen, I am nonetheless injured by this attitude. As you fling about your ‘whilsts’ and look down upon our ‘gottens’, I find myself appalled by the superior snooty attitude of you Brits. Anyone would think you’d invented the language! 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Haha!!! Just call me Brutus 😉 xx
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ehem … Caesar’s last words are supposed to be ” Tu quoque filii”, not “Et tu” . Both mean “You too” but it is what we are taught here . I googled a little about that and I discovered “Et tu filii” only appears in Anglophone, Slovenian and other Barbaric references . The dispute between the two sides of the pond seems rather amusing seen from a civilized culture 🙂 .
LikeLiked by 1 person
A lot of us can’t; the rest of us think you can’t. But at least we’re more sparing with our Capital Letters.
LikeLiked by 2 people
But more copious with commas 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
The only thing more distasteful that a tat, at least to my old-school sensibilities, is one that is misspelled. La honte!
LikeLiked by 1 person