With the media hysteria over swine flu - excuse me, 2009 H1N1 influenza - I thought I'd take a shot at clearing up some confusing terms related to health and illness. They may not make you feel any safer, but take heart - it appears that the hysteria over the disease may be more to be feared than the actual germ. At least it's not "Captain Trips":

Epidemic/pandemic
An epidemic is a sudden outbreak of illness affecting more than the usual number of people or a wider range or people than usual. A pandemic is a multi-country or worldwide epidemic.

Nauseous/nauseated
We've already heard flu this and flu that, ad nauseam, but does that make us nauseous or nauseated? "Nauseated" is that unpleasant feeling in your tum-tum; "nauseous" is something that provokes that ill-feeling. As one source put it, if you say you're nauseous, you're describing how people react to you.

Infectious/Contagious
Contagious diseases spread via bodily contact with an ill person. Infectious diseases are spread by germs through air or water or some other medium. All contagious diseases are infectious, in the sense they are caused by some foreign substance entering the body, but not all infectious diseases are contagious. In any case, wash your hands!

Virus/bacteria
A virus is a chunk of protein that contains genetic material. A virus is not considered to be a living thing. It cannot reproduce on its own; it must infect a living cell to grow. Flus and colds are caused by viruses.

Bacteria, however, are one-celled living organisms. They can multiply and reproduce themselves. They cause diseases like strep, tuberculosis and scarlet fever. Antibiotics kill bacteria, but do nothing to viruses. So taking an antibiotic to fight cold symptoms or the flu is a waste of money and effort.

Inoculate vs. vaccinate
These originally were two different processes to achieve the same goal - immunity against a disease. Inoculate at first meant introducing some kind of substance into the body to provoke an immune system reaction that would provide lasting immunity. Vaccinate meant to introduce a vaccine - a liquified preparation. Their meanings have since merged.

Prone/Supine
If you catch something, either contagious or infectious, and don't have immunity, you may wind up in bed. But prone or supine? That's mostly your choice: Prone means face down, supine means face up. Me, I just curl up in a ball and will the world to go away.

Although IM and texting and tweets may remake standard English, a Chinese toy company has apparently decided typos should be introduced to infants.

The company manufactured soft, colorful alphabet blocks with at least three typos: "yatch" for "yacht," and "umberlla" for "umbrella," while "X'mas tree," with the apostrophe, stood in for "X."

Kudos to the British granny who spotted the goofs, complained to the store that sold them, and forced them to remove the toys from the shelves in their 382 stores. But aren't umbrellas called "bumbershoots" over there?

According to Canada's Times& Transcript Web site, a press release announcing ticket sales contained two numbers, one correct and the other, a toll-free line for the Trinity Railway Express in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. The commuter railway has already been deluged by fans calling ahead of the start of sales, and they are definitely not having a nice day.

The correct number, for all you Bon Jovi fans out there, is 1-888-720-5600

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger may have been thinking impolite words related to reproduction when he hinted he would not veto a tax repeal bill he had previously threatened to axe.

"Why do an exercise in fertility? If they don’t really care about what happens — if they don’t think they need the money, then say nothing and we’ll just let it happen," Stroger fumed in an interview with WLS-AM radio. He obviously meant to say "futility," but sounds like he goofed on the recording.

The comment made the headlines in the Chicago Sun-Times and will likely raise some eyebrows. Though not as many as the tax bill, which apparently is a darned-if-you-do, darned-if-you-don't situation.

Click the link for the radio interview to assure yourself that the journalist reported accurately. The comment is about two-thirds of the way through the interview.

America's truckers are learning a new language, while forgetting one that dominated the superslabs for decades.

Back in the Internet's Age of Innocence - aka dial-up - we launched one of the early websites for the trucking industry, as an online presence for a truck-driver oriented magazine we published then. The conventional wisdom at the time was that truckers would never adopt the Internet - availability was the practical reason, and perceived "inability" to comprehend such a technology was the other, if whispered and elitist, reason most often given.

The skeptics were dead-wrong: Truckers and trucking companies adopted the 'Net early and strongly, forcing truckstops to add phone lines and data ports for drivers who stuffed laptops into their duffel bags. It was, and is, a great way to help drivers do business.

In the 15 or so years since then, truckers have continued to adopt technology that helps them communicate (cell phones were once also regarded as beyond truckers' means and desires; once cells became commodities, they took to the highways by the thousands).

Texting is now widespread, and Twitter is the newest wrinkle - because I keep up with the trucking industry, I'm seeing it become more and more popular. (Which worries me, because I know some drivers are texting and tweeting while turning miles. Like a lot of 4-wheelers.)

That aside, though, I'm also seeing the demise of the old 10-codes as a new generation of drivers come aboard. It's like watching the children of immigrants shed their parents' native tongues in favor of the new culture's lingo - and in some cases, that is literally what is happening. I recently wrote an opinion piece for a trucking magazine about this phenomenon; you can see it here.

(For an explanation of the 10-codes I use, check here.)

Once is never enough when it comes to proofing and spellcheckers are only one step along the way. They may help point out problems with grammar and punctuation - or create them - but they can't alert you to a correctly spelled but unintended word.

An item on Ananova.com points out how this can be even more distressing than fielding calls from readers who have spotted your goof. "My interests include cooking dogs" notes that resumes and curricula vitae often contain unintentional errors that doom the applicants' chances of landing a job. That would certainly be true at a publishing house - take note, prospective contributors.

i've always been fond of Capital One's TV ads featuring hoards of barbarians trying to cope with the modern world. I bet some of Capital One's customers would like to take a battle-axe and broadsword to the company though, after receiving this flier with a significant typo. I feel sorry for the customer service reps having to explain that instead of $5,000, the "bonus" was only $50.00, and even more so for unwary cardholders who charged ahead, so to speak.

UPDATE: Thanks to Margaret W. for pointing out that I had a typo in this post - shoulda been hordes of barbarians, not hoards.

Mental Floss, one of my favorite magazines, recently published an article on 7 typos, some of which you will have seen mentioned here. Me, I want a copy of that Bible.

Chicago, The City of Broad Shoulders, saw a lot of broad shoulders from 11-17 May as the US Marine Corps blew into the Windy City to give residents a close-up look at today's Corps during the service's inaugural Marine Week.

Hundreds of Marines performed community services tasks such as cleaning up parks, assisting with Habitat for Humanity projects and rehabbing community centers; they also visited schools, participated in sporting events, exhibited the latest in Marine equipment such as the V-22 Osprey and demonstrated Marine skills such as martial arts. On Sunday 17 May, a group of Marines staged a mock raid in the city's popular Arlington
Park racetrack complex, complete with Ospreys landing and troops fanning out.

The previous evening at Navy Pier, the Marine Corps League hosted a VIP reception keynoted by an address from General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret), who was the 32nd Commandant of the Corps and serves now as National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama. Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton W. Kent, and LtGen. Ronald S. Coleman, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs were also among the guests who included local political figures and many members of Chicagoland and Illinois Marine Corps League Detachments.

Local Leaguers were deeply involved in the planning and implementation of events, assisting the active duty Marines wherever necessary. Their scarlet jackets and caps - known as "covers" in Marine parlance - stood out in the crowds. It was a chance for these veterans to spend time getting to know some of today's Leathernecks who carry on the Corps' proud legacy.

The week-long event was an opportunity for Chicagoans to meet the individuals who make the Marine Corps, said Chicago native Brig. Gen. Melvin G. Spiese, commanding general, Training and Education Command, in Quantico, VA. "The idea of Marine Week is to get the major cities in America exposed to the Marine Corps," said General Spiese. "We couldn't find a better place to kick this thing off. We are America's Marine Corps."

"This is a Marine Corps town, it’s a very popular part of the military here," said Chicago Mayor Richard Daley in opening the week-long event on 11 May. “You’ll see it all week, there is a great history of Marine Corps families in Chicago."

Plans are in the works for the next Marine Week scheduled for this fall in Boston.

My employer, Rex Hammock, frequently castigates reporters and editors who publicly demonstrate their utter lack of math skills or understanding of statistics. Rex missed this one - The San Francisco Examiner recently reported the average tourist to the City by the Bay spends $23.33 per day. Here's the link to the original story, as well.

I know the recession has created lots of travel bargains, but any resident of SanFran should have said "huh?" in writing or editing that piece.

And just to be mean, The Snitch story couldn't keep straight what the Examiner typo was - note the discrepancy between the figures in the first and last paragraph.

In an ad campaign released in New York by The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) on Thursday, the anti-gay marriage group misspelled the word "marraige" at the close of their commercial. The ad quickly got pulled, and presumably the error will be, ahem, straightened out.

I've never watched an episode of "Heroes" and remember the name of one of its stars only because it makes me think about Italian bread. So it's only because of my doughy - sorry, doughty - typo-hunting news reader that I spotted this item about Hayden Panettiere.

She wanted her Italian motto to say "Vivere senza rimpianti" - live without regrets - but either she or the tattooist threw in an extra "i" in the last word, spelling it "rimipianti." Scusi!

It's amusingly ironic that she probably does regret having to live with the hard-to-erase typo, done up in an art form celebrated in song by Jimmy Buffett as "a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling."