Eggcorn Forum

patschwieterman wrote:

I suspect that this is a WTF typo…

Pardon my ignorance of the jargon, but is a WTF typo a What The Fuck(?) typo, or does the acronym stand for something else entirely? And, in either case, what exactly is a WTF typo?

All words or phrases are in some degree vague, denoting a set of concepts rather than a single absolutely precise one. When we talk about typos, malaprops, etc., we are lumping different phenomena under a single heading.
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A typo (short for typographical error), as opposed to a misspelling, could be a matter of grabbing a letter from the wrong compartment of the typebox or putting the correct letters in a mixed-up order, or hitting the wrong key on a linotype machine or a typewriter or a computer keyboard. Nowadays of course the latter is more likely to be the case. With a keyboard you expect typos of the sort where a finger hits an adjacent key to the targeted one, and such are unquestionably typos. “Are” for “or” is unlikely to be one of that kind, at least not on a qwerty or Dvorak keyboard. If it were it would have to be a double error: substitution of “a” for “o” plus addition of “e”. (The “a” and “o” keys are not adjacent on the qwertyboard, though they are in the Dvorak layout. The “r” and “e” keys are adjacent in qwerty and could both be struck by a single slightly-offtarget fingerstroke (accounting for the difference in number of letters without changing the number of typing strokes), but they are far from each other in Dvorak.)
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A different kind of typo would be a bimanual error where a stroke on the wrong hand is substituted for the corresponding stroke on the other hand. A typo of “word” for “work” or vice-versa is of that sort. I don’t see anything like that here.
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Typos will only accidentally produce intelligible words. But of course there are so many words in English at least that differ only in one letter, or only in the ordering of a pair of letters, from other words, that this result often occurs.
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A WTF typo, as I understand Pat’s usage at least, is a typo that, so to speak, comes out of the left blue yonder: you can not easily see how you came to type that, and you know perfectly well that it is incorrect, so it is not an error of ignorance. You say “what the f”, correct the error and move on. It is a useful category, but overlaps with several others.
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I think we often (I am relatively certain that I often) produce what you might call typological malapropisms, or malaprop typos, and I think this substitution may well be one of those.
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One variety of spoken malapropisms (not the classic kind) might be called WTF malaprops. It occurs when you say something that you perfectly well know is the wrong word or turn of phrase, but you have no idea why you came out with that word as opposed to the one you know you meant. (The classic malapropism, in contrast, is produced out of ignorance.) I think or/are switch, and some others that Pat has called WTF typos in the past, are parallel phenomena, only with the typing mode of expression substituted for the oral articulatory one. You know perfectly well (when you think about it) that the word is “or”, but for some reason the signifiant of the wrong word (i.e. the typing sequence “are” instead of “or”) got activated. It isn’t just a simple mechanical or muscular inaccuracy (classic typo), but the substitution of one well-entrenched complex muscular routine for another.
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Of course, to the extent that you can figure out why you made that particular mistake, you will start thinking of it as a blend, or a Freudian slip, or a whatever.
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Well, now it’s all clear for me, anyway! Hah.

patschwieterman wrote:

David, when you post lengthy responses to others’ posts, I’m often unsure about whether you’re disagreeing with the earlier post, or instead just using it as a jumping-off point for more reflection.

Definitely the latter here. I didn’t think I was disagreeing with anybody particularly, just trying to think out loud. Clearly not very clearly, since the result was “uncertainty” — sorry ’bout that!
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I think some of the miscommunication may have arisen from the fact that I wrote my post (#5) in response to Dixon’s questioning post (#3) rather than to yours (#4), then was away from the internet for several hours and only sent it after getting back, by which time yours had been posted.

… for me “typo” means “what you type when you meant to type something else” – so the category can include both mechanical typos and what people sometimes call things like “psychological typos” or “cognitive typos.”

Yes, that’s pretty close what I was trying to say also; it is a complex category.
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However, there are some things I type when I meant to type something else that I don’t think of as typos: they are not motivated by any part of the process of typing but by other factors at a different level. Maybe you’d still call them typos. For instance, just over a year ago a reporter on the ISS wrote “The 40-minute prebreathe of pure oxygen by Grunsfeld and Feustel started at 7:57 a.m. Once that’s completed, the airlock can occur.” I’m sure he (or she) meant to type “the airlock can open” or “the opening of the airlock can occur” (or one of several other functionally similar possibilities), but this is what he did type. But I wouldn’t call it a typo, even a psychological or cognitive one.

I don’t think I personally expanded the sense of “typo” to include both psychological and mechanical errors. I picked that usage up from others; it’s one that’s current among a fairly large number of us, and it’s almost certainly spreading. I think it’s a reasonable and natural enlargement of the word’s semantic range.

Agreed —I use the word that way too. It is a complex category in virtually everybody’s usage. I find it useful to try to keep aware of the complexity, is all.

I agree with you that the processes that lead to these kinds of typos are almost certainly related to particular types of errors in oral articulation. But I’ve also noticed that I commit this kind of error with a far higher frequency in typing than in speech. That may be simply because I’m a poor typist, but I suspect that the difference in cognitive pathways involved may also have a role here.

I’m sure you are right.

And I don’t like the phrase “Freudian slip” when applied to these errors – for two reasons. First of all, I reject the psychoanalytical underpinnings that the term implies. Though don’t misunderstand me here – I DO think that something you’re thinking about (or trying hard not to think about) can find a way of getting expressed when you don’t intend to express it; the basic idea of the “return of the repressed” can’t be completely dismissed even by an anti-Freudian like myself.

Agreed—I also think much of Freud is pretty close to hogwash. “Freudian slip” came to mind as an analytical term I have often heard used—like you I tend to avoid it myself and would probably have done better to avoid it here. Still, it is a fairly economical way to communicate the idea of “language that inadvertently betrays the fact that the speaker/writer was thinking (and perhaps at some level trying hard not to think) about sex instead of just what he was overtly trying to communicate about.”

But that brings me to my second objection to the phrase “Freudian slip.” For me, “WTF typo” is a useful category because it refers to all those weird things you type that don’t seem to have any explanation at all – even Freudian ones. They’re what’s left over when you’ve exhausted every other way of accounting for them.

But isn’t the “Freudian” or “return-of-the-repressed” explanation (where it is reasonably invoked) another way of accounting for them? Oh, I think I get it: by “even Freudian ones” you mean “they don’t even have Freudian explanations”. ?? If that’s what you mean then I think we agree: “WTF typo” is a useful name for the residue. But then I don’t know what sort of thing you had in mind for your “second objection”. The fact that not all slips are Freudian slips, and that there is a residue, doesn’t seem to me to be an objection to the term “Freudian slip”.
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btw I just corrected “terum” instead of “term”. That would qualify as a wtf typo, for me—I haven’t a clue why I spelt it like that.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-05-15 22:06:04)

In other words, by your analysis, a purposeful figure of speech and not an error? (And therefore not a typo, since typos are a kind of error?) Conceivably. If the perpetrator were to say “Yes, I wrote it that way on purpose,” I might even be convinced. I too like to verb nouns and noun verbs. Certainly hypallage and lots of other things can become fixed and standardized in a language even if they started out as errors. In any case, not a convincing example for you, I guess.
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I have examples of the same sort of thing done by yours truly and others where the perpetrator was definitely of the opinion that “oops, I goofed.” e.g. I at least once typed

for a several of reasons

which I wouldn’t call a typo. It’s a kind of phrasal blend, and the fact that it was typed is somewhat irrelevant to it. (It may also or instead have been an editing error, another type I hesitate to call typos.)
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How about (from a conference announcement)

Any last-minute changes, if any, will be displayed on the
conference notice board.

Is the redundancy of “Any … , if any” a typo? For me it looks like a construction-switching error, and though it was typed I wouldn’t call it a typo.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-05-16 04:56:10)