ENGLISH SPECIAL ....NO ROOM FOR ERROR

NO ROOM FOR ERROR

A single spelling mistake can cause a butterfly effect worth millions — a lesson these companies and individuals learnt the hard way

Missing hyphen

In what is probably one of the most unfortunate typos in history, on July 22, 1962, NASA launched and destroyed its ambitious rocket, Mariner I. Less than five minutes into flight, the rocket exploded, setting back the US government by $80 million. The root cause for this disaster? A lone omitted hyphen, somewhere deep in hand-transcribed mathematical code. Reports suggested that a programmer at NASA had left out the symbol while entering a “mass of coded information.” In his 1968 book The Promise of Space, author Arthur C Clarke memorialised the typo as “the most expensive hyphen in history”.

Fruit of labour

In 1872, one misplaced comma cost the US Government $2 million. To put that in perspective, today that comma would be worth over $50 million. The tiny error was made in the US Tariff Act where instead of making tropical ‘fruitplants’ exempt from tariffs, the act used the wording ‘fruit, plants.’ That rogue comma meant that all tropical fruit and plants were free from charge. The government did eventually correct the typo, but until after two years of lost revenue.

Flying off the handle

In 2006, Italian airline Alitalia accidentally listed businessclass flights from Toronto to Cyprus at $39, instead of $3,900. Two thousand quick-thinking travelers took advantage of the mistake, booking tickets as fast as they could. When the airline tried to cancel the tickets, they suffered a massive backlash from their customers. Worried about their reputation, Alitalia decided to cut its losses and allowed the budget ticket holders to fly; a move which improved public relations, but cost the company $7.2 million.

The S factor

In 2015, the British Government listed family business Taylor and Sons as a business facing liquidation.

Unfortunately, the business they meant to list was Taylor and Son – an entirely different company. As a result of the mix up, a 124-year-old thriving company went bankrupt after its clients backed out of deals, suppliers cancelled contracts and creditors withdrew investment. Taylor and Sons took the British Government to court, where it was handed a $11 million compensation bill.

The switch

In 2005, Japanese financial company Mizuho lost a quarter of a million dollars in less than a day, thanks to an administrative typo. While trying to sell shares of a recruiting agency on the Japanese stock exchange, the bank accidentally listed 610,000 shares of the company at one yen each – instead of each share costing 610,000 yen. As a result, Mizuho lost the equivalent of its entire profit from the previous year, in less than a single trading day.

Erotic destination

Remember the good ol’ days when companies ran ads in the Yellow Pages? One such ad for a California-based travel firm Banner Travel Services however made the firm a laughing stock thanks to a typo made by the phone book. In the ad, the company’s ‘exotic’ destinations were listed as ‘erotic’. Whilst it might have drummed up some attention, it wasn’t all welcome. A bunch of Banner lawyers sued Yellow Pages for $10 million for the damages.

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