Pasta with black people. i mean pepper.

Last week Penguin Group Australia reprinted 7,000 copies of the Pasta Bible following an AUD$20,000 typo.

According to The Age, a recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto* called for salt and freshly ground black people, rather than the intended salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Head of publishing, Bob Sessions, could not understand why anyone would be offended by such a slip. He said almost every recipe called for ground black pepper, not black people, which occurred only once:

…[a] misprint occurs which obviously came from a spellchecker. When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable.

Sessions does not specify if the spellchecker was human or computerised. I’m guessing computerised (with added human error), which led me to the following experiment…

Using Microsoft Word, and giving the author/layout person the benefit of the doubt that they are not a cannibalistic racist, I assumed they intended to type pepper. I typed variations of the word black pepper, to see just what it took for my spellchecker to throw back black people:

1. Peoper: pepper, proper, pauper, popper, paper. Note pepper out in front.
2. Pepoer: pepper, peppier, paper, piper, popover. Again, no people in sight.

And then, assuming the typist was thinking about actual people, but just couldn’t spell it right:

1. Pepple: people, pepper, popped. Interesting.
2. Peopel: people, propel. Hmmm…

It seems there is a pattern to my spellchecker. Try typing pepper, and you get pepper, without a person in sight.

Try typing people, and you get people. Sometimes, pepper.

Back to Mr Sessions though, who continued his indignant rant to explain Penguin would not recall the cookbook due to the fact it would be extremely hard to do so:

We’ve said to bookstores that if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this … silly mistake, we will happily replace [the book] for them.

Who is this guy? While it’s refreshing to read such honest ignorance, I find it offensive that one of the world’s major publishing houses can’t find a proofreader who can handle a cookbook. Sessions, of all people, should know the many steps a manuscript goes through during production, and just how many eyes would go over every page before it goes to print. Even once it’s printed, Penguin should have someone doing final quality checks before the book is distributed nationwide and sold for $20 a pop.

So call me small-minded, but I cannot accept a major publisher making such a small mistake,  blaming the spellchecker, then worst of all, refusing to understand how anyone could find it offensive.

And that’s without even touching on the fact that the recipe calls for freshly ground black people.

*Spelt! Bloody hippies.

Surprisingly fitting black pepper picture from Hodgers.