A Steroid Hit The Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers

by Martin Toseland

A joyous and irreverent paean to gaffes of all sorts, this hilarious collection gathers together the best typos from newspapers and publications from around the world. With errors that include the confusing as well as the borderline offensive, these slip-ups are accompanied by confessions from industry insiders such as editors and typesetters who provide the history of how and why misprints come to pass. Witty and surprising, this is a compendium that celebrates the impossibility of getting everything right every time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, Comedy, Journalism, Language

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't laughed out loud when reading a book since George Carlin's Napalm & Silly Putty but this book did the trick. The author did something that many readers do..............look for gaffes, typos, and misprints in written material, whether it be newspaper articles or instruction manuals (the most common sources). Even the KJ Bible doesn't escape!

The classified ads are particularly a great source of gaffes since they are usually phoned in and are often misunderstood by the proofreader. An example:

"R.D. Smith has a Singer sewing machine for sale. Phone 66958 and ask for Mrs. Kelly who lives with him cheap."

The most obvious errors are contained in headlines.

POLICE BEGIN CAMPAIGN TO RUN DOWN JAYWALKERS
PANDA MATING FAILS; VETERINARIAN TAKES OVER
SOMETHING WENT WRONG IN JET CRASH EXPERTS SAY
MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH

This is just a sample of the hilarious contents of this book which the author has collected over the years. It makes me wonder if I made silly mistakes in some of my reviews here on GR but it is too late now.

Highly recommended for a chuckle or a guffaw.

[Gerhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

'If there is one lesson that can be gleaned from this, it is the peril you put yourself in by committing absolutely anything to print. Whether you miss a letter, insert a space, or simply condense a phrase to a Carry-On level of lewdness, the scope for error, humiliation, ambiguity and outright offence is simply too wide to contemplate.'

Review to follow.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 2 out of 5]

"2 sisters reunited after 18 years in checkout counter"
Must have been Walmart

[Manybooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Tosleand's 2008 A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers is basically an engaging and often laugh-out-loud hilarious catalogue of (printed and thus not oral, not spoken) language based and themed errors, omissions, mistakes etc., ranging from the straight typo or the ambiguous statement to the downright bizarre, with in particular the many groan worthy headlines and weirdly worded, blooper-filled newspaper article examples usually demonstrating sub-editors or proofreaders taking their eyes off the ball so to speak, preserving in particular the humble misprint as a perpetual source of hilarity and also of course of Schadenfreude. But yes, A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers also shows quite a number of instances where there likely would not be any proofreaders or editors involved, such as with usage errors, typos etc. gleaned and culled from church bulletins, restaurant menus and the like (and that in the section of A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers regarding books, Toseland showcases both some really stylistically horrid and perplexing texts penned by well-know and famous English language authors and also wonderfully and delightfully a literary review harping and moaning about misprints and typos whilst ironically sporting many of the same).

A joyous and irreverent (but thankfully also never holier than thou and arrogant) paean to written, to in-print verbal gaffes of all sorts is A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers, and that yes indeed, A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers also continues to be a delightful personal reading experience for me, a book that I encountered on Open Library, but that I am definitely considering finding a copy of A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers for my personal bookshelves, since ALL of what is being presented by Martin Toseland is not only delightfully funny and diverting, is never tedious or becoming dragging and aggravating (and as such very much different from many similar blooper-themed collections I have read to date), but could also very nicely and easily be used as fun language based "error detection" activities with and for my ESL students and to also demonstrate to them that even established and famous English language newspapers and authors like George Orwell can and do make written and even printed language based blunders (and that I also very much appreciate how Toseland in A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers does not just present his examples anonymously, but that he often if not even usually identifies the "offending" newspapers by name if possible and that in the section on books, authors are named, as are the titles of the books being included as containing usage errors and strangely worded passages).

So yes, my general rating for A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers (with regard to reading joy and also the potential of using A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers in the classroom) is solidly and delightfully four stars. But I am indeed upping my rating for A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers to five stars, since I am indeed so so so pleased that Martin Toseland refrains from showing arrogance and superiority (like for example Richard Lederer ALWAYS seems so keen on doing with and in his Anguished English books) and that for his section in A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers regarding strangely worded foods and menus, there are both international (and badly translated into English) menus and also British pubs and restaurants with weird and strangely worded menu items being presented by Toseland (and not to mention that there are no classroom howlers being shown in A Steroid Hit the Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers but instead a plethora of gaffes regarding history, politics, culture etc. penned and printed by different newspapers, including such famous and esteemed ones as the Guardian, Newsweek etc.).

[Kylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Steroid Hit the Earth is a collection of real typos and misprints collected by the author. I cannot stress how funny this book is. I was howling with laughter the entire way through, and it takes a lot to make me laugh.

[Syed Ali Hussain Bukhari · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Steroid Hit The Earth
By: Martin Toseland


This is a hilarious collection of typing blunders from around the globe newspapers, magazines and books  relating topics like news headlines, life and death, books, royalty, corrections, food, church and religion, sports, history, names and advertisements etc.
The reader can spot a lot of typos and howlers that can leave him in revelry for a while.
It also help us turn our focus from daily faced problems to a few moments of joy.

A good humorous book that should also be read for the sake of our own selves because it teaches us to check our writing before final posting.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those stocking filler books that someone had given my husband, thinking that an editor he would find it interesting, and I picked it up as a light read after a heavy day at work.

It only took me an hour and a half to read, so it is not a book that will keep you occupied for long. Divided up into themed sections, I found most of the clippings quiet amusing, but there were not many that had me rolling on the floor laughing. For me the most amusing bit was discovering a clipping from my father's local paper, a paper I've found many errors in myself.

Amusing, but more worth borrowing than buying.