The Oregonian today let the world in on a little mistake made by the Hood to Coast organizing team. Every year they have an official t-shirt for volunteers. Only this year its an ‘offical’ t-shirt, apparently. Seems someone didn’t run spell check before sending the t-shirt design to the printer and “Race Official” was spelled “Race Offical.”
Hood to Coast is a uniquely Oregon event and all in all it is run well, so I wont give them a hard time. Instead I thought I’d show you who around the web has made the same spelling mistake with the word “Official.” The results surprised me!
Singer/song writer Kate Bush says that katebush.com is her “offical” web site: “Welcome to the Kate Bush Offical Website” says the headline.
TechCrunch, the worlds largest blog, wrote a post about Facebook’s ‘offical’ user count: Facebook’s Offical User Count Now 250 Million.
Like Kate Bush, the World Barista Championship says their web site is the ‘offical’ one: “Welcome to World Barista Championship’s Offical Site” says the headline.
Tom Brady’s fan club on Facebook is apparently the ‘offical’ one: Tom Brady (offical fan club) | Facebook
There is even a published book with the misspelled ‘offical’ in the Amazon.com page title: Sedona: Offical Guide to Red Rock Country. (spelled correctly on the cover of the actual book though).
And those are just a few, there are THOUSANDS of others when you do a simple Google search. It seems that artists are frequent culprits.
So don’t feel bad, Hood to Coast….you are not alone.
I thought I wanted to be on the Twitter Typo Police Squad. Now, I think maybe 'woman of the cloth.' Someone must watch out for t-shirts!
It would only have taken a few Sharpies and a few hours of volunteer time to add an I to Official. If we let this slide, next year it's liable to be Offal.
Mr. Foote is a spinmeister willing to let sponsors' logos appear beneath an egregious misprint and willing to let 3500 people working for him for FREE to wear a shirt they should be ashamed to appear in.
This is a for-profit event, so a reprint would have come out of profits. This is unlikely to bring him more sponsors next year…