Rare Book Monthly
There's Money in Misspellings
AE's MatchMaker search helps you find misspelled (or correctly spelled) terms at auctions through automated daily searches.
So we’ll try a search for “Pittsburg(h)” on eBay. Spelled correctly, I found 6,609 listings. Guess I won’t even try looking up places like “New York.” Without the “h,” I still find 593 items. Lets try searching eBay’s book category only. This finds 84 Pittsburgh items with the “h,” 10 without. Several of these are about sports teams, the Pirates and the Penguins. Does this tell us anything about the education of sports fans? Of course not. There’s one about Pittsburgh Plate Glass, Carnegie Steel, and a church. And then there’s even one that’s spelled correctly. This one’s a yearbook for the college in Pittsburg (yes, “Pittsburg”) Kansas. Good, practical folks that Kansans are, they didn’t confuse their city by adding a silent “h.” But those other nine listings sure don’t look like Kansas, Toto. They look like misspellings to me.
If Pittsburgh’s a pain, how about that city in Arizona that’s pronounced “Toose-On?” Everyone knows there’s a “c” in there somewhere, but where? “Tuscon?” “Tucson?” If you picked the first, you qualify to be an eBay seller, but not a speller. 375 got it right, 35 wrong. And, if you search “Tuscon” looking for those “Tucson” misspellers, you’ll also pick up listings from people who can’t spell “Tuscan.”
How about Niagara Falls? 815 got it right, but an astonishing 156 skipped the second “a” and spelled it “Niagra.” I’ll take “Manhattan,” as did 1,739 others, but 71 preferred “Manhatten.” And, in case you’re thinking of the Kansas exception, in Manhattan, Kansas, they spell their city the same way they do in New York.
How about personal names? Do you collect Edgar Poe? Who? That name sounds strange. We all know the great poet as Edgar Allan Poe. Or is it Edgar Allen Poe? Or Edgar Alan Poe? Let’s put it to a vote on eBay. “Allan” gets 224 votes. “Allen” gets 83 votes. “Alan” 2. The majority rules, so we’ll presume his name was “Edgar Allan Poe.” Here’s an even tougher one. “Ghandi” or “Gandhi?” The voters have elected the Mahatma “Gandhi” over “Ghandi” 184-22. What does this mean? Well for starters, it means that there are 22 Gandhi items and 85 Poe ones that people who search under correct spellings will never see. If you search for the misspellings, you will find them, and competitive bidding is likely to be sparse.
What is the most famous name in books? Shakespeare? His name is listed 946 times on eBay in the category of “Books” alone. Now before we go any further, I’m going to have to throw in a warning. If you think you’re going to find a contemporary Shakespeare folio on eBay for $5 because the owner misspelled his name, dream on. It’s not going to happen. However, there are 28 books on eBay concerning “Shakespear.”
