It’s been twenty years now that I’ve gotten among the finest alphabet ever. Donald Knuth confirmed the error I had established in one of his books and sent me the coveted check!
Donald Knuth and his reward for any error in one of his books (even typographical ones) are device discipline folklore. Preposterous to think that I could perchance acquire one! His books have been combed through by thousands and thousands of people. Smarter group than I am. More tolerant people.
And afterward it happened. I idea I had established an error. But I did not study it correct away, I waited and re-checked it for months, lest I create a fool of myself. I equal told our local brilliant at university who did not attention much and dismissed my excitement.
See, the error I established is in a extremely particular place. The publish is “Computer Modern Typefaces”, so it’s a small peruse publish (not the TeXbook or The Art of Computer Programmming), but still, practically everybody who has stated that publish a attempt volition have peruse complete that error.
Because it’s on leaf Arabic one. In the archetypal paragraph. The extremely archetypal word.
That’s why the Memo site says “E1”: Computer Modern Typefaces is Volume E in the Computers & Typesetting series. Page 1.
I have censored the inspect slightly, since Knuth is fearful person power do bad things alongside those numbers, and he hasn’t been handing out genuine checks for many years now. Today you get a imagination certificate of a imagination bank, the Bank of San Serriffe.
But why volition you discover me there alongside the admission “0x$1.20”, ie decimal $2.88? A few years afterward I sent in another projected error, but I was wrong. Knuth really wrote a few paragraphs why exactly I’m wrong, but since he counted several throwaway declaration in my bug study as a fine suggestion, I got another inspect for $0.32.
