We Live in Fear of This

This came today over the newswire:

TORONTO (Reuters) - A company that sells software to correct irritating Internet spelling mistakes has reissued its latest news release to correct a minor snafu.

TextTrust, which says it focuses on "eliminating the negative text impressions on Web sites," re-released a Tuesday news release to correct a mistake that listed the most common spelling errors on "the 16 million we (sic) pages it has spell checked over the past year."

It said commonly misspelled words included independent, accommodation and definitely, which were spelled independant, accomodation and definately.

"It's very embarrassing," said Pat Brink, PR consultant for the Toronto-based company. "I made the mistake, not TextTrust -- they do a much better job, It's certainly egg on the face of this public relations person."

SPOGG makes spelling errors and typos from time to time, always more embarrassing because of our mission. But did the PR person responsible have to use a cliche in his or her apology?

We looked up the origins of "egg on my face." The Random House dictionary of slang says it comes from a 1950s detective show. A hard-boiled one, we assume.

(Look -- here's face on an egg!)