Tpyos are funny.

When I tell people that I am a math textbook editor, they often respond with something like, “Wow, that must be boring!” I try not to be annoyed at these moments, because I suppose that it’s an easy assumption to make. Although my job entails many multi-faceted tasks, the fact remains that I spend most of my time reading mathematics text books.

And the published versions of mathematics textbooks, the versions that the general public sees, are boring in a lot of ways. In a sense, I am paid to make them that way. It’s my job to make the text clear cut and easy to understand, without any flowery language superfluous examples. But what people don’t understand is that these are not the versions I spend most of my time reading. The “working versions” of the texts, seen by editors only, are often absolutely hilarious.

The sources of humor come in three basic forms. The first and most common, perhaps, is the abundant number of typos that appear in early (and sometimes even late!) versions of the manuscript. Many typos are just annoying for editors; I can’t understand how people with PhDs in mathematics never learned the difference between “there” and “their,” or worse, between “waste” and “waist.” But others can really tickle the funny bone. One of my officemates laughed for days when “Population Pyramid” became “Poupulation Pyramid.” (If you don’t see the 4th-grade humor yet, say the misspelled version out loud.) Another officemate found it particular amusing when a problem that was supposed to be about a transistor was written as being about a “transitor,” a word she interpreted as being a dinosaur-esque creature, complete with claws and a growl that she is fond of imitating. Personally, my favorite typo is when “function” is missing its first n. (Again, say it out loud.) Sometimes I think the authors and production workers that introduce these typos are trying to poison the minds of today’s youth.

Typos do not always come in the form of misspellings, though. Working as an editor has really made me appreciate the value of words, because I have seen how losing one word from a sentence can completely change its meaning. For instance, there is a question in one of our books that now reads, “Does the infinite series converge? If so, what is its limit?” Strictly mathematical, and what most people would call boring. But the version I saw had one word missing, and instead of that boring mathematics question, it was a philosophical question for the ages: “Does the infinite converge? If so, what is its limit?” My mental image of 11th graders trying to answer that question kept me laughing for the rest of the day.

There are two other ways the working text can become funny – authors trying too hard and editorial assistants not trying hard enough. However, I’m going to have to save those stories for next week, as I am off to a barbeque today. I hope you all had a great Memorial Day! Thanks, as always, for reading.