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The 7 funniest typos (so far this year)

Everybody makes typos—just remember to proofread your document before publishing it. You never know what misspellings you may find, because sometimes keystrokes conspire to create hilarious expressions such as these:

Anesthetic [Unesthetic] building

Anesthetic (or anaesthetic in British English) is the substance your dentist uses to numb your mouth so you don’t feel pain during a dental procedure. An ugly building is unesthetic.

Suing [Using] the document

Document in the witness stand

Unless the document has broken the law (and some documents do, but it’s better to call the grammar police when that happens), you’re using the document.

Naive [Native] vegetation

Tree that looks like a baby with a pacifier

Even if the rainforest was probably naïve to believe we would protect it, if you’re not a poet and are just referring to the vegetation that exists naturally in a region, write native vegetation.

Complaint [Compliant] with the EU cookie law

A chocolate chip cookie holding a complaint letter

You can file a complaint with EU regulators to complain about the so-called EU cookie lawthe directive on privacy and electronic communications. But if you want to tell your website visitors that it complies with a policy, then write that your website is compliant with the policy.

Party-colored [Parti-colored] dog

This one is pretty straightforward. Just imagine parti comes from partial, even if it actually comes from the French partir, meaning “to divide”. A parti-colored dog is usually white with patches of a different color (like a Jack Russell terrier). A party-colored dog is…well, I hope it isn’t, because dyeing a dog’s fur is absurd.

Bottle brush [Bottlebrush] garden

Bottle brush garden

Unless your landscape architect designed an unconventional garden with bottle brushes instead of shrubs, you have a garden with bottlebrush plants. These are shrubs whose flowers resemble a brush for cleaning bottles.

Fine palette [palate]

Artist's palette

You can have both a fine palette, if you’re an artist, and a fine palate, if you can also appreciate a gourmet meal.

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Last revised on 15 June 2022

Cristina N.

A freelance editor and writer with a keen interest in science, nature, and communication, I love to craft articles that help and inspire people.