Why hyphens matter: Newspaper implies something VERY dirty after grammatical error dramatically changed the meaning of a seemingly-innocent headline (16 Pics)

Reading thousands of words a day – and knowing that missing just one thing can completely flip the meaning of a story – is undoubtedly high-pressure stuff.

So when looking at the below headline, allow yourself to feel a smidgen of sympathy for the person at The Pratt Tribune who looked over this article before giving it the all-clear.

That’s quite an unfortunate error from the Kansas tri-weekly paper, and is an example of some rogue grammar turning a harmless story into something it really wasn’t supposed to be.

In American English, “first hand” should’ve been “firsthand” – while in Britain “first-hand” would’ve been used to avoid the very NSFW headline.

The error is providing a lot of laughs.