I never make misteaks.
But for the benefit of the more fallible members of our audience, here are three words for slips of the pen.
Dittography is the accidental repetitition of a word or or syllable. Dittographs are common in transcribed works, where bleary-eyed copyists may inadvertently write the same phrase twice. The word comes from the Greek ditto-, meaning “double”, and -graphia, “to write”.
Haplography is the opposite of dittography: it’s the unintentional omission of letters or words that should be repeated, such as writing Missippi instead of Mississippi. The word is also Greek, from haplo- (“single”) + -graphia (“to write”).
Everything sounds more exotic in Latin, so if you’ve blundered in your writing, don’t confess to a mere mundane mistake. You’ve committed a lapsus calami: literally, a slip of the pen.
Hungry for more? Exotic words to appeal to any palate can be found in the Lunchbox archives!
