I have come across many ‘atomic typos’ in my job.
Malapropisms, the topic of my last post, can occur in writing but most often you hear them in speech. As an editor, I am usually correcting writing not speaking (although you’d be amazed at how many garrulous people become carefully articulate once I tell them my job), so I thought I should give some real-world examples of errors I see. Most of these are examples of typos, rather than malapropisms (where the person genuinely believes they’ve used the right word) or of spelling mistakes (where the person knows which word they want, they just don’t know which letters need to go in it).
This is a list of examples I’ve seen that the authors (and spell check) would have missed because they are actual words, just not the words that were wanted, and they are words that come up all the time in the corporate/academic writing that I’m working…
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The Editor's Pen with Paul Vander Loos 
s hippy to see this peace today since i am the blog who has been popularizing the atomic typo meme since i first encountered the CF Hanif coined term in his newspaper online a few years back and that was my oped in the China Pest link above and my own original AT blog is hear: http//atomictypo.blogspot.com – so I am glad this meme is catching on. Fun, too. MORE MORE! danny dan bloom in Taiwan.
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Danny Bloom (@polarcityman) says:
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July 18, 2013 at 2:44 pm
There was an amazing atomic typo in the Taipei Times the udder day. They reprinted an Observer UK article about selfies and the first sentence which must be been part of an autocorrect thing, said “Just point your camera at a 45 degree Centigrade angle and snap away…” I later told the editor and they corrected it online. SMILE
Thanks Danny. I appreciate your input, and realise that English is not your first language. Good catch about 45 degree error.