Typos Can Be Deadly

I'm going to try and keep this post short, because I have a lot of work to do, and I'm trying to be a more efficient worker (by not wasting loads of time blogging, etc), but I had to stop and share the blunder I just made.

I've been working all morning on updating our webpage, and right before lunch I started a blurb about two of our department directors speaking at the NAEH Annual Conference in Washington D.C.

Coming back from lunch (conveniently the fire alarm went off ten minutes before I usually break for lunch - the reason I stopped mid-story. Then, aware of my ravenous desire for food, I took advantage of the break to eat.) I resumed writing the short article.

Reading the finished story, I found this: "... tradition of collaboration with other institutions as we strive to end homeless elders home for good."

Oops.

For those of you who missed it: "we strive to end homeless elders for good."

Not good. You see, I had changed the direction of the statement and ended up with a horrible sentence, akin to how our old name looked on mailing labels: "The Committee to End" or, even better "The Committee to End Elder."

Very bad.

So you see, with one wrong word you can kill off an entire segment of the population. How easily the "Committee to End Republican stupidity" could become the "Committee to End Republicans."

In summation: never leave a sentence half-written. You never know what might happen.