Typographical error
mistake made in typing printed material
A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a spelling or transposition mistake made in the typing of printed or electronic material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual typesetting. The term is used of errors caused by mechanical failure or miskeying. Before the arrival of printing, the copyist's mistake or scribal error was the equivalent for manuscripts. Most typos involve simple duplication, omission, transposition, or substitution of a small number of characters.
Marking typos
Typesetting
Historically, the process of converting a manuscript to a printed document required a typesetter to copy the text and print a first "galley proof" (familiarly, "a proof"). It may contain typographical errors ("printer's errors"), as a result of human error during typesetting. Traditionally, a proofreader compares the manuscript with the corresponding typeset portion, and then marks any errors (sometimes called "line edits") using standard proofreaders' marks.
Typing
When using a typewriter, typos were commonly struck out with another character such as a strikethrough. This saved the typist the trouble of retyping the entire page to eliminate the error, but as evidence of the typo remained, it was not aesthetically pleasing.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Typographical error” is mistake made in typing printed material. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Typographical, error and mistake, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q734832. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Typographical error” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.