Editors' Worst Nightmares and other Tattoos

I think every editor's worst fear is finding a mistake after their work has already been published. Therefore, I can only imagine the absolute anguish one of us would feel upon finding one of the following permanent mistakes (cue screams of horror from all my co-workers):



If you think it doesn't happen that often, think again. I'm not kidding. The L Magazine showed these insane (and I'm pretty sure real) tattoos that just make me want to cry as an editor. (And as someone who has tattoos. And as someone who has enough brains to check that my tattoos are spelled right, even if they are in a foreign language. I triple checked, even with professors of the language.)

So many misspellings and punctuation issues!

The blog Awful Tattoos has some doozies, too, but I only found one with grammar/usage issues (is that bad or good?):



Do you think that the tattoo artists notice these mistakes and just don't say anything? Or do they not check their spelling either? Sacrilege!

Even though these are spelled correctly, I wouldn't want them on my body:

I did happen upon a pretty cool blog called Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos which pays homage to tattoos quoting books, poems, and lyrics.

I noticed a lot of people like Kurt Vonnegut:

Sylvia Plath:

and J.R.R. Tolkein, although his are mostly in Elvish:

Another site even has tattoos in Braille:

So many ways to express yourself!

I like the idea of getting a tattoo of a quote from a book, but there are so many from which to choose. If I ever do decide, though, I'm definitely spell-checking it first.

Oh, and for those of you whose passions lie in other forms of art/knowledge/information, literary tattoos are certainly not the only way to go. Check out Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium:

Who knew??