Freudian typo: The accidental emoticon

Raymond Chen

Some time ago, I ran across the following Freudian typo in a mail thread discussing plans for the project after Milestone 3, commonly abbreviated M3.

I’d like to talk with you about your plans for this area after <3.

On the US-English keyboard layout, the M and comma keys are adjacent, and a shifted comma is a less-than sign. A simple off-by-one-key typo resulted in M3 turning into an emoticon.

Raymond Chen

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