Caleb Johnson (RSS feed) — Oct 7th 2009

Whether caused by rushed jobs, or just plain sloppiness, typos are an everyday reality. Most of the time, in this lickety-split Internet world of ours, it’s not a big deal. Sometimes, however, a mistyped letter or two can end up costing the misguided typist a lot of money (and time). Here are five recent textual slip-ups that were particularly expensive.

Missing ‘L’ Costs County Money

When an Ottawa County clerk noticed a misspelled word on an election ballot in November 2006, he probably quietly chuckled, until he saw the cost. Leaving out the ‘L’ in ‘public’ might have been funny — if it hadn’t ended up costing $40,000 to reprint the ballots.

GPS Typo Makes Swedish Tourists Spend Too Much on Gas

When spelling a word, it’s easy to mix up the letters, but most folks notice their error fairly quickly. This past summer, on the other hand, two Swedish tourists who were headed for Capri, Italy made the mistake of typing ‘Carpi’ into a GPS, and ended up 400 miles away from their destination. With gas prices approaching $6 to $7 a gallon in Europe at the time, it turned out to be an expensive error.

Japanese Trader Costs Bank $340 million

Even if it was close to quitting time, there’s still no explanation for why, or how, a Japanese trader sold 610,000 shares of J-Com Co. for 1 yen instead of selling, as he’d intended, 1 share for 610,000 yen. In total, he cost his company $340 million back in September of 2006.

Typos Sends Woman to Puerto Rico Instead of Costa Rica

In February, a travel agent mistyped an airport code and sent his customer to Puerto Rico instead of Costa Rica. That one letter sent the woman 1,500 miles from her intended destination, costing her a few nights of her vacation and around $1,270, too.

Man Undersells Antique Bottle of Ale on eBay Due to Typo

In September 2007, a man listed an antique bottle of ale on eBay and misspelled its name. Instead of typing ‘Allsopp’s Arctic Ale,’ he typed ‘Allsop’s,’ royally confusing collectors. One lucky (and smart) bidder won the 150-year-old bottle of booze for $304 and sold it right away for $503,300. That one forgotten letter cost the original seller quite a chunk of change.