What is the 'it'?

A couple of times each year a judgment comes across my desk in which what was intended to be a reference to “the Minister” turns out, on closer inspection, to be a reference to “the Minster”.

The judge didn’t pick it up. Whoever typed the judgment (if it wasn’t the judge) didn’t pick it up. And at least one judge’s associate didn’t pick it up. Perhaps not irrelevantly, Spell Check is never going to pick it up, on account of a minster being a type of church.

To my knowledge, I haven’t yet let one of these go through to the outside world. But it’s probably just a matter of time.

I guess this comes back to that thing I have said before about looking – really looking – at every word as you work your way through a judgment. But with 25 years of experience, one learns that there are words that have to be looked at particularly closely: words which, with one letter removed or added, become completely different words. Yes, “Minister”. But also (for example) “statute” and “public”. All of those are words that tend to appear in judgments; “minster”, “statue” and “pubic” not so much.

On the other hand, I recently walked right past the word “typicial”. (Fortunately, someone else’s eye caught it.) Maybe that’s where the missing “i” from “Minister” ended up.