The Typo a customer, leading to simple errors like a mistaken date or the incorrect spelling of a name, such as “Wier” for “Weir” or some such. But Jluy? That’s the name of a month! Any draftsman just glancing at his design would have caught that ~ without having to check his notes ~ before sending it on to the engraver. Right? How could Mitchell have made such a mistake? But then the engraver (let’s call him Hiram) must have missed it too! But how? It isn’t like proofreading a manuscript where hundreds of words pass under your eye and tiny glitches are so hard ot spot (like that one). No, this headstone consisted of just eight words and two dates. The words were all fine, and the dates were fine, too. Except for Jluy. We can picture Hiram, behind
the mask protecting him from the grit and stone dust, gripping the sandblaster nozzle firmly and then, carefully, etching out the first three lines, the eight words. Now he’s ready to move down to the fourth line: the bir th and death dates. (“Great,” he thinks, “almost done.”) He bears down on the capital “J” and shapes it nicely. Now he comes to Mitchell’s blatant mistake ~ the capital “J’ is followed by a small “l.” What? No word in the English language, so far as I can discover, has a “j” followed by an “l.” None at all ~ not at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, upper or lower case. It simply does not occur. True, we do speak of the Chinese having a JL-2 missile. Also, there is a big audio company called JL, and another one that sells sports clothing. Then there used to be a Latvian political party ~ Jaunais laiks ~
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