Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Mind your p's and q's

Ronald Tuckwell was the editor of the Pilot Mound Sentinel from 1916 to 1949. He and Pete Fraser were good friends who liked to tease each other, but it was all in good fun.

“Hunting for typographical errors? Could be!”1 There were plenty of teachers in the Fraser household.
As an editor, Tuck would have winced at typos, but knew they would sneak in sometimes. He said as much in the paper itself.
Fidograms were lighthearted bits, but Tuck makes a valid point about typos.2
The Sentinel was a well-respected, award-winning newspaper. It took a lot of work to publish a weekly issue on time. Readers didn't always appreciate or understand how difficult it was.

A reminder to readers: late submissions to the paper made the job even harder. Rushing to get an edition to press just invites errors.3
Did you notice the typo in this poem about typos?4
There are different theories about the origin of “Mind your p’s and q’s,” but in typesetting it literally means not mixing up those letters. When using hand-set type, individual letters read backwards and are set into a composing stick upside down, and from left to right. It’s easy to see how p’s and q’s and b’s and d’s and u’s and n’s can get mixed up. A nick on one side of each type piece, felt by the thumb, helps, and care must be taken to return used type to its correct place in the type case in the first place.

Hand-set type in a composing stick, working left to right and upside down.5
Typos turn fluorescent after they’re printed. Blame them on the “printer’s devil,” a young printshop apprentice who performed all kinds of chores, like mixing ink and sorting type, and sweeping up.
The term “printer’s devil” has been ascribed to the apprentices’ hands and skin getting stained black with ink […] Once cast metal type was used, worn, or broken, it was thrown into a “hellbox,” after which it was the printer’s devil’s job to either put it back in the job case, or take it to the furnace to be melted down and recast.”6
If “printer’s devil” sounds familiar, perhaps you are recalling a Twilight Zone episode by that name. In season 4, episode 9, Burgess Meredith plays a skilled linotype operator who shows up to rescue a small-town newspaper that is failing. The editor sells his soul to this devil, who increases circulation by printing stories he typesets before they happen.

The Twilight Zone/Printer’s Devil excerpts [6 min.]
Posted by CallFourZero, 2025

Like gremlins7 in aviation, a demon named Titivillus was a fictional type of printer’s devil. Dating back to the Middle Ages, he plagued monks copying manuscripts, and “haunted every print shop, performing mischief such as inverting type, misspelling words, and removing entire lines of completed type.”8 Titivillus is known world-wide.

One of five grotesques adorning the 1910 Queensland Government Printing Office in Brisbane, Australia. Two of them stare down from the rooftop.9
The same building features another devil who glares at visitors from above the main doorway.10
Titivillus was blamed for the daddy of all typos.
Known as the “Wicked” Bible, the text, printed in 1631, leaves the word “not” from the seventh commandment. This means that amid exhortations that “thou shalt not kill”, and “thou shalt not steale”, readers are also informed that “thou shalt commit adultery”. One thousand copies of the text, which also came to be known as the Adulterous or Sinners’ Bible, were printed, with the printing error only discovered a year later.   When it was uncovered, the printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas were summoned by order of Charles I to court, and found guilty. They were also fined £300, and their printing licence removed, with the entire print run of the offending text called in, and the majority destroyed.11
“Thou shalt commit adultery” in what became known as the Wicked Bible. No-one knows if it was an unintended error, or an act of sabotage by a rival printer. An estimated 10 Wicked Bibles exist, and can be worth $100,000 USD at auction.11
Editor Ron Tuckwell could rest assured that typos in the Sentinel would be far less serious. As fastidious as he might have been, though, no publisher can claim to be perfect, and Titivillus troubled every print shop. [The samples below are from the Sentinel unless otherwise noted.]
   
The Printing Museum, Houston, TX, Setting Metal Type [2-1/2 min.]
Letterpress studio manager Jessica Snow demonstrates how to set metal type using a composing stick.

MIND YOUR u’s AND n’s

Never mind p’s and q’s; it seems the printer’s devil at the Sentinel often confused u and n. When using hand-set type, the mix-up might have occurred when returning pieces to the type cases, or while setting type in the composing stick. Either way, it was not an infrequent mistake.

Touruament! Yikes, this typo from 1925 would have turned fluorescent, and the typesetter’s face would have turned red.
Whoops, another headline gone wrong.
Ouch! It’s embarrassing to misspell your town’s name: Pilot Mouud in the first line of a caption.

UPSIDE-DOWN CHARACTERS

A proofreader would underline the offending character(s) and note it in the margin with a spiral “turn over” mark. (This proofreaders’ mark is scarce these days; it would be hard to insert a letter upside down when keyboarding.)

Here are just two of many samples that were missed in the Sentinel:

Typos occur in regular text, but are easier to spot in rushed advertisements.
It wasn’t unusual to see condensed fonts used to cram titles into one line. It doesn’t hide the upside-down e in Service, though.

THE LINOTYPE

“Linotype machines, Anthony Hordern and Sons department store, c. 1935, by A. E. Foster” The linotype revolutionized typesetting, ruling the industry world-wide for 100 years after its introduction in 1886. Many claim Edison called it the eighth wonder of the world, astounding praise from a proud inventor himself.12
The Linotype machine operator types text on a 90-character keyboard. The machine assembles matrices, or molds of the letter forms, in a line. The assembled line is then sent to the casting part of the machine where it is cast as a single piece, called a slug, from molten type metal in a process known as hot metal typesetting. The matrices are then returned to the type magazine via a distribution bar, to be reused continuously.12
The Machine That Printed History For 100 Years [36 sec.]
TTM-III Tiny Things Massive Impact

The advantages over hand-set type are obvious. The linotype process was seven times faster. Solid lines were also much easier for compositors to handle when making up pages, and less likely to be spilled (or “pied”).

On a linotype, wedge-shaped spaces would drop in place to justify solid lines of type, a welcome improvement over hand-set type that had to be manually justified, often with little pieces of lead or even thin pieces of paper. 
 
Because the brass type moulds automatically returned to their cases (magazines) after a line was cast, the printer would not run out of letters. The linotype slugs could be saved for repeated use, or just re-melted following a print job.

UPSIDE-DOWN LINES

A compositor’s error rather than a typo, upside-down lines are sometimes found in a column of text. This can result when a corrected linotype line is inserted by a compositor rushing to make up a page.
 
An embarrassing error from 1923.
The Moffatts would have done a double-take.
Ooof! The second line in the middle of page 1.
Another upside-down line, but at least Diphtheria was spelled correctly. It often wasn’t.
A confusing line error Frasers and Houldens would recognize. Lines three and four are transposed.

ETAOIN SHRDLU


“Linotype keyboard. Keys are arranged by order of frequency as they appear in the English language (with most frequent letters on the left of their colored group; additional ligatures and special forms are in the right of the group). Note that lowercase and uppercase letters are in separate colored groups of keys (respectively on the left and right part of the keyboard). The central group contains keys for punctuations and digits.”13
When a linotype operator makes an error he has to complete that line of type before he can make a new line. The easiest thing for him to do is to run his fingers down the first two vertical rows of his keyboard. The result is the emergence of a line containing “etaoin shrdlu.” And when the operator forgets to pluck the faulty line from the mould, “etaoin shrdlu” gets into print. So often has “etaoin shrdlu” appeared with a “Mr.” prefixed, that Mr. Etaoin Shrdlu has really become a famed press personage. He has a relative who dwells on his right hand in the third vertical row on a linotype machine, young Mr. Cmfwyp. The family is completed by boyish Vbgkqj and tiny Xz, whose name trails off strangely into typographic symbols.14 
In the Q&A column “A Word to the Wise,” in the Washington DC Evening Star, author Mrs. Frank Cloby often looked to her “outrageous assistant Dr. Etaoin Shrdlu” for answers.
Etaoin Shrudlu entered popular culture and was sometimes presented as the name of a character (with a wink to typesetters). In one instance it was also a fitting name for a printshop’s stray dog. A wandering pi-hound rescued by the Daily News of Lyons, Kansas was named Shrdlu, and became their mascot. The dog gave birth to a puppy one evening, which was promptly named Etaoin. By the next day Shrdlu had delivered 14 more little Etaoins. That’s a lot of typos!
 
Shrudlu, the Daily News mascot in Lyons, Kansas, 1932.15
Buddy on a late night. Sometimes the printshop’s mascot can’t handle the overtime.
A classic 1942 science fiction story by Fredric Brown entitled “Etaoin Shrudlu” tells of a linotype that is itself a devil. An editor rents his linotype machine to an odd character who somehow casts a spell on it and brings it to life.
As a living, adaptable creature, the machine becomes super efficient, lubricating its own moving parts, reading text from its clipboard and unerringly setting type itself without the intervention of an operator, generating its own electricity, etc. At first this thrills the newspaper editor, as he can not only save time producing his biweekly newspaper, but get lucrative contracts from New York publishers. But then disaster strikes. The intelligent machine sets type for some socialist books, and begins demanding a shorter work schedule. It sets type for pulp romance magazines and begins demanding that the editor buy a second linotype machine to be its girlfriend! The editor becomes the machine’s servant instead of the other way around when it achieves the ability to move and to fight, so that the editor cannot deactivate it or escape from it.
 
The retired linotype operator figures out how to neutralize the machine—he has the machine set type for books on Buddhism, inspiring it to achieve Nirvana; the linotype has become so pacific it allows the two men to disassemble it and bury the parts.16
But of course, etaoin shrudlu is really a wrong line, an error that did not amuse proofreaders and editors. Collectors of errata know that samples abound in hurried newspapers, and are more elusive in books.
 
In this September 30, 1905 Winnipeg Tribune story, the proofreader missed two lines that should have been pulled, along with two other typos. 
The Tribune linotype operator was having an especially bad day. Looks like he gave up at the end of this May 6, 1907 story and went to the bar.
Another Tribune error, June 4, 1970.
 
Newspaper archives suggest that the Winnipeg Tribune had a higher incidence of etaoin shrdlu errors that the rival Winnipeg Free Press. One can only guess why. Perhaps the linotype operators at the Trib were less skilled, weren’t remelting their bad lines on the spot, or had worse proofreaders than the Free Press. In a world of deadlines, sometimes type is “railroaded,” printed without having been proofread at all.
 
Linotypes ruled the pressrooms for 100 years, across the world, and etaoin shrdlu knew no language barrier. A search in the online Library of Congress archive returns 1158 hits.
 
Be kind to typesetters, too. A puzzling first line (and with shrdlu spelled wrong) in Tampa, FL, El internacionale, Feb. 24, 1922, p. 4.
Another beleaguered linotype operator just needs a break. The Waterbury, CT Democrat, April 1, 1932.
Etaoin shrdlu sightings disappeared with the linotype. By the 1970s, the machines faced a typesetting revolution of their own. Phototypesetters flooded the market, and the reign of hot metal typesetters was over.

Ottmar Mergenthaler’s wondrous machine that replaced six hand-set typesetters was itself replaced.17
At Hignell Printing Ltd., this is what shut down the linotypes.
A page from a sales brochure, mid-1970s, for Addressograph Multigraph’s Comp/Set 500 direct entry phototypesetter. The phototypesetting boom of the 1970s and 80s ended with the advent of desktop publishing and digital printing. [The colour orange was all the rage in the 1970s.] 
While “etaoin shrdlu” errors have disappeared, the usual typos have not. Some would moan that errors have only multiplied and are taken less seriously (especially in texts produced by thumbs on iPhones!) Today’s spellcheckers are useful, but can’t identify an “atomic typo”:
… a typo that happens to result in a correctly spelled word that is different from the intended one. Since it is spelled correctly, a simple spellchecker cannot find the mistake. The term was used at least as early as 1995 by Robert Terry.18
“Untied States” instead of “United States” is an atomic typo, but given the state of the country these days, is it really wrong? 
 
According to veteran print historian Frank Romano, there is “more change than at any other time in the history of our industry.” He understands that the pace is increasing, too.
  • The handset typesetting era began in 1440 and ended in 1970, and it is still practiced in some quarters (500+ years).
  • The machine typesetting era began in 1886 and ended in 1976, and it is barely in practice (90 years).
  • The phototypesetting era began in 1950 and ended around 1990, and it is totally gone (40 years).
  • The laser imagesetting era began in 1978 and ended in 2008, replaced by direct-to-plate, on- and off-press (30 years).
  • The digital printing era began in 1976 and the laser CTP era began in 1991.19
Written in 2011, Romano’s summary is several years out of date. Artificial intelligence has seen to that. Maybe Fredric Brown’s story of 1942 is prophetic, and AI will become sentient. Perhaps it will conquer typos, and then the world. 
 
There’s always a revolution lurking.
 ❤
 
Recommended viewing:
 
Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu [28:45], 1978, directed by David Loeb Weiss
“On July 2, 1978, the last hot lead edition of the New York Times rolled off the presses. Weiss, a proofreader for the Times, documented the phasing out of this historical process, and what impresses us now, beyond the Ludlow machine (which casts the lead at 535 degrees), the Linotype machine (operated for the last time by Carl Schlesinger, who also narrates the film), and the presses, is the incredible noise generated by all these people and devices. The process is fascinating and sad, and the new computers seem baleful in the fluorescent lights of the new composing rooms. The film is as much about the passing of the mechanical age as it is about the newspaper biz, as told by those who were there that day...”
 
Linotype: the Film – In Search of the Eighth Wonder of the World, 2012, directed by Douglas Wilson
“The film tells the charming and emotional story of the people connected to the Linotype and how it impacted the world.”

 
__________________________ 
Sources (retrieved August 25, 2026)
  1. “In Good Company,” Pilot Mound Sentinel, May 7, 1942
  2. “Fidograms,” Pilot Mound Sentinel, July 23, 1925
  3. “ERRORS in a newspaper…” Pilot Mound Sentinel, April 19, 1934
  4. “Isn’t It The Truth,” Pilot Mound Sentinel, April 7, 1955
  5. “Composing stick,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composing_stick 
  6. “Printer’s devil,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer%27s_devil 
  7. “Gremlins,” Recollections blog. https://frasertrunk.blogspot.com/2017/07/gremlins.html 
  8. “Printer’s devil,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer%27s_devil 
  9. Gregory Martin, Australian Letterpress Fellowship, Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10167778140139498&set=gm.3376818699144527&idorvanity=164953780331051   See also: Christopher Dawson, “The Seven Devils of George Street,” Christopher Dawson Public History blog, April 20, 2023. https://dawsonchris.com/2023/04/20/seven-devils
  10. Photo by John Robert McPherson, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Government_Printing_Office_printer%27s_devil_George_St_Brisbane_P1030694.jpg. See “My Old Nemesis Titivillus” for more images of him: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2021/01/17/my-old-nemesis-titivillus/ 
  11. Alison Flood, “Extremely rare Wicked Bible goes on sale,” The Guardian, October 21, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/21/rare-sinners-bible-on-sale-bonhams-auction 
  12. “Linotype machine” Wikipedia. Photo: Linotype machines, Anthony Hordern and Sons department store, c. 1935, by A. E. Foster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine
  13. Linotype machine” Wikipedia. Keyboard photo: Copyright 2006 Marc Dufour for Wikimedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine#/media/File:Linotype_keyboard_with_Star_Quadder_attachment.jpg  
  14. “The Press: Etaoin Shrdlu,” TIME, March 31, 1929. https://time.com/archive/6818557/the-press-etaoin-shrdlu 
  15. Albert Payson Terhune, “Tales of Real Dogs,” The Independent (Elizabeth City, N.C.), July 8, 1932, p. 5. https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83025812/1932-07-08/ed-1/?sp=5&q=etaoin+shrdlu&r=-0.196,0.714,1.354,0.811,0
  16. M. Porcius, “Four Fredric Brown SF Stories from 1942 and ’43,” MPorcius Fiction Log (blog), April 5, 2020. https://mporcius.blogspot.com/2020/04/four-fredric-brown-sf-stories-from-1942.html. The story, originally published in Unknown Worlds, is read (by a stilting narrator) in a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCciwGL4mFE
  17. John Manders, “Linotype!,” John Manders’ Blog, October 30, 2024. https://johnmanders.wordpress.com/2024/10/30/linotype/
  18. “Typographical error,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_error 
  19. Frank Romano, “The day the typesetting industry died,” WhatTheyTh!nk blog, December 16, 2011. https://whattheythink.com/articles/55522-day-typesetting-industry-died 

🔝


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