Jeff Deck - The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time

T O H ENRY C OLLINS
AND THE GRAMMATICAL WORLD HELL INHERIT

or thog ra phy (r-thgr-f)

n. pl. or thog ra phies

1. The art or study of correct spelling according to established usage.

2. The aspect of language study concerned with letters and their sequences in words.

3. A method of representing a language or the sounds of language by written symbols; spelling.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1 |How to Change the World
June 810, 2007 (Hanover, NH)

2 |Allies
June 2007February 2008 (Somerville, MA)

3 |First Hunt
February 23March 4, 2008 (Somerville and Boston, MA)

4 |Benjamin Joins the Party
March 9, 2008 (Rockville, MD)

5 |Maladies
March 1112, 2008 (Kill Devil Hills, NC, to Myrtle Beach, SC)

6 |Beneath the Surface
March 1516, 2008 (Atlanta, GA)

7 |Fear and Retail
March 1718, 2008 (Mobile, AL, to New Orleans, LA)

8 |Davy Jones Isnt a Biblical Figure
March 20, 2008 (Lafayette, LA, to Galveston, TX)

9 |Typos Arent Charming
March 2627, 2008 (Santa Fe, NM, to Flagstaff, AZ)

10 |Over the Edge
March 28, 2008 (Grand Canyon, AZ)

11 |Pressed
April 210, 2008 (Los Angeles, CA, to San Francisco, CA)

12 |You Got a Friend
April 1217, 2008 (San Francisco, CA, to Vancouver, BC)

13 |Run-Time Errors
April 2225, 2008 (Cataldo, ID, to Rapid City, SD)

14 |The Epic Chapter Wherein Heroes Battle and the Scenery Flashes Past
April 27May 1, 2008 (Minneapolis, MN; Madison, WI; Chicago, IL; Bloomington, IN; Cincinnati, OH; Newport, KY)

15 |Why Hudson Cant Read
May 26, 2008 (Athens, OH, to Cleveland, OH)

16 |How Do You Deal?
May 1116, 2008 (Albany, NY, to Manchester, NH)

17 |The Welcome-Back Committee
May 1722, 2008 (Somerville, MA)

18 |Court of Opinion
August 1012, 2008 and the days that followed (DallasFort Worth, TX; Phoenix and Flagstaff, AZ)

19 |A Place for Starting Things
September 1315, 2009 (Divers locations in and offshore from the Boston, MA, area)

Wherein Jeff Deck, unassuming Editor, has his measure taken by a flurry of his peers and learns that his Destiny is to serve a Higher Cause; whereupon he recognizes the Sign of his quest in an errant sign which warns gainst either geographic indiscretion or trading locks of hair.

O n a fine June weekend in 2007, in the verdant reaches of northern New Hampshire, I decided to change the world.

The world needed changingthat I knew. Global warming threatened to give us all a lethal tan; war and poverty decimated whole nations; crops worldwide were shriveling; even our brethren beasts menaced us with their monkeypox and bird flu and mad cow disease. I just couldnt figure out what I could do for our troubled civilization.

Those thoughts echoed in my head as I drove into the idyllic little town of Hanover, New Hampshire, for my five-year college reunion. Id been toying with the idea of a road trip. Oil addiction and carbon emissions aside, I had to count myself among the many Americans who regarded their cars as a signifier for freedom itself. Any day I could get into my iron steed andescape. I hadnt, so far, but I could. I could explore the country, embark on towering adventures, and simultaneously fulfill some noble purpose. Yes, a road trip seemed like a fine idea, but I didnt know what was worth seeing and, more crucially, I didnt know how to infuse the trip with the sparkling sap of magnificence. How do people blunder into conditions that their unique abilities alone can resolve? I couldnt trust that I would wander into a situation where only my intimate knowledge of Final Fantasy lore would defuse a standoff between two rival video-game-obsessed street gangs. I pondered that as I pulled into a parking spot and ventured off to find my classmates.

To exacerbate the matter, it turned out that five years was more than enough time for my fellow graduates to work miracles in the public and private sectors. My heart beat at techno tempo as I listened to tales of the most astonishing exploits and ennobling acts of virtue. I talked with one woman who was slowly restoring ecosystems damaged by the rapacious engines of industry. Another guy, a lawyer, sought to break up harmful corporate monopolies. Others were doctors, bankers, and politicos, all positioned to alter the great trajectory of civilization. And then there was me.

So, Jeff, what have you been doing? theyd ask, with the unspoken postscript: for humanity?

Unlike my classmates, I hadnt erected any schools for Balinese orphans or wrested any kittens from deaths blasting maw. After graduating, Id moved to the Washington, D.C., area to see what I could do with the skills Id picked up from a creative writing degree. The chief export of the nations capital is, of course, paperwork, so I reckoned I could land some kind of writing or editing position at one of the many nonprofits and associations in the area. An academic publishing house in Dupont Circle took me in and nursed me on the Chicago Manual of Style. I burned a few years there as an editor, managing two strangely divergent publications: a magazine about rocks and minerals, appropriately titled Rocks & Minerals, and a New Age-y journal about consciousness transformation and other inscrutable bits of pseudo-academia. Neither topic was exactly my area of expertise. My qualifications for the job rested mainly on my ability to ferret out spelling and grammatical mistakes in text. I found that I was a natural, spotting typos with idiot-savant-esque regularity. I hadnt had this kind of chance to show off my geeky prowess since winning consecutive junior-high spelling bees. In high school Id branched out from mere spelling perfectionism to the full gamut of editing delights on behalf of my school paper. At the publishing house, I could water my little patch of textual earth, checking that fluorite was spelled with the u before the o, and that the names of Norse gods had the s that they required.

This sufficed for a while, but eventually I noticed the distinct lack of influence that my little labors had on the world outside my publications. I felt the call to return to New England, and I traded D.C. for Boston to be closer to family and old friends. Now I worked as an administrative assistant for a center at MIT that studied climate change, but my heart remained that of a reviser and corrector.