Author(s): Martin Toseland

Humour

So, you're writing an essay, a book, an article, your blog. You sit back having read it for the sixteenth time and decide to commit to print, press 'send' or say 'that's fine, let it go'. Of course, just after that moment the glaring error in the headline screams at you - too late. Your stomach feels like it's hurtling to your toes and the world goes slightly wonky. Welcome to the world of misprints!

A Steroid Hit The Earth is a catalogue of errors, omissions, mistakes and other disasters, ranging from the straight typo or the ambiguous statement to the downright bizarre. Each demonstrates a sub-editor or proofreader taking their eye off the ball, to the delight of millions, every single example preserving the humble misprint as a perpetual source of 'Schadenfreude'. From the holy typo of 1631, when Barker and Lucas' Wicked Bible exhorted people to commit adultery by omitting a crucial 'not' from the seventh commandment, A Steroid Hit The Earth reaches back in time to the days before modern printing and our own spell-check obsessed age.