Typos: Now with Real-World Consequences!!

Here's a story from today's news about a plane failing to take off due to a typo!!

Apparently, the plane's first officer recorded the weight into the flight system as 262.9 tons, when in actual fact it was 362.9 ton.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5431941/typo-caused-airbus-plane-tail+strike-during-takeoff-in-australia

Not one of the more exciting features, sure, but if you're the type of gamer who enjoys seeing their games boot up a few second fast than usual it's gravy.

Wanted for multiple offenses, this sentence from Gizmodo omits the plural 's' as well as the comparative on 'faster.'

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5328336/xbox-live-nxe-beta-reveals-smaller-game-install-sizes

This article from Gizmodo serves to simultaneously illustrate the hazards of bad spelling and also contains some mistakes itself.

First the warning:
I do love the Swedes. Most of them. Maybe not the couple who drove 400 miles away from their destination because they misspelt its name—typing the industrial city of Carpi instead of the island of Capri—into their GPS. (emphasis mine)

Then the error:
Remember, swedes and everyone else: Do not follow technology blindingly, especially when technology could always fail because of our own human failures.

In English, unlike some other languages, nationalities are proper nouns and should always be capitalized. Writer Jesus Diaz already illustrated his knowledge of this in the first excerpt, but did not follow through here on the second.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5326310/swedes-drive-400-miles-in-the-opposite-direction-thanks-to-gps-mistake

From Gizmodo, posting about a recent development showing possible healing properties of a blue dye:

This rat's skin is blue and its color may be the secret to avoid spinal cord injuries and paralysis.

Here, the verb needs to be in the present progressive form: avoiding.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5324102/this-blue-rat-may-have-the-secret-to-avoid-spinal-cord-injuries

It's like Tourette's, only with typing

RIM says they had nothing to do with the update it, and are telling affected people how to get rid of it.

Apparently, someone at Gizmodo thought it would be neat to just include random words in their article.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5320513/when-carriers-update-your-blackberry-with-spyware

It's Alive!!!!!

It's been a while since I've posted, so I've got a bit of catching up to do. Here come some Internet errors, rapid-fire!

The rest of us, who were paying close attention, sort of half smiled and though "oh, neat" to ourselves before going back to work.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5310106/you-guys-123456-789-is-a-once-in-a-lifetime-oh-you-missed-it

It's a 2-for-1!!

From Gizmodo:

It's like a single replacement for a chair, and coffee.

Absolutely unnecessary comma there, then, in the very next sentence, a bit of misspelling.

I find that physiologically it also makes a great alternative to the sitting position, where one's back and gluts and neck are constantly stretched while the hip flexors and abs are constantly compressed but unused.

This is unfortunate, because 'glut' is actually a noun and fits perfectly into the sentence from a grammar perspective. It's just not the word he meant to use.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5210799/samurai-ergonomics

Weird....

This one just makes absolutely no sense:

Take photos of them in—camouflaged (or not) on the ATM—and then e-mail them to us at tips@gizmodo.com with the subject line "Card Skimmer Beatdown."

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5204551/card-skimmer-beatdown-we-want-you

There are some mistakes that are so common, they should be inexcusable to professional writers. This is Proofreading 101, folks. I found the flaunting of "your/you're" today on Gizmodo:

The magic happens when an app is programmed to recognize certain objects, and know to augment what your seeing with 3D visuals on top.

These things really shouldn't be happening.

Source: http://www.gizmodo.com/5184665/vuzixs-camar-augmented-reality-headset-provides-a-glimpse-into-future-computing

Where's the verb?

Sometimes, people forget that without a verb, a sentence just isn't complete:

In the battle for e-book reader domination, Samsung's Papyrus—a new touchscreen model.

This sentence clearly needs a rewrite, as there really isn't a verb that can just be slipped in somewhere - unless you consider the 's in 'Samsung's' to be a contraction (Samsung is/has) rather than a possessive. Then you could say something like "Samsung's introducing/brought the Papyrus."
Or possibly add a "welcome" or "meet" after the comma ("In the battle for e-book domination, welcome Samsung's Papyrus - a new touchscreen model"), though in that case, the introductory "In the battle..." phrase seems off. We're not contenders on the battlefield, the e-book readers are.

Source: http://i.gizmodo.com/5182750/samsungs-touchscreen-papyrus-e+book-reader