20 Shocking Tattoo Spelling Blunders Clients Failed to Spot for Months
Getting a tattoo is like signing up for a painful rollercoaster ride you can’t jump off — especially when that tattoo session stretches on for hours, turning what felt like a gentle bee sting into a full-blown scream fest. But hey, at least once it’s healed, it’s done hurting, right? Well, what if I told you that the real agony might not come from the needle but from spotting a glaring mistake inked on your skin forever? Yep, some tattoos end up as lifelong reminders of a typo, a misspelled word, or a bungled design. Imagine proudly showing off your tat only to realize it reads your name wrong, or worse yet, has a completely backwards compass! People online have been dishing out some hair-raising, face-palming stories of tattoo blunders that’ll make you triple-check every letter before you ever set foot in that chair. Grab your magnifying glass, because crossing every T and dotting every I just went from advice to survival strategy!
It’s no secret that getting a tattoo is painful. Especially if you have to sit in that chair for hours, what felt like a bee sting at first might become unbearable over time. But the discomfort is temporary, and once the piece of your dream heals, it’ll never hurt you again. That is, unless you realize there’s something wrong with the artwork. In that case, the pain might last a lifetime…
Netizens have been recalling the absolute worst typos and errors they’ve ever seen on tattoos, so we’ve gathered some of their stories below. From artists making spelling mistakes to clients not realizing that they messed up their vision until it was too late, these tales might be difficult to read. But we hope they’ll remind you to cross every T and dot every I before getting your next piece of ink, because it’s going to be with you for the rest of your life!
When my dad was getting a tattoo, he wanted my name, my mom’s name, and my sister’s name on it. The dude misspelled my name. He misspelled Josh. Spelled it Jush. When my dad noticed it, he just had him make the u an o but now I am forever known to my family as Jush.
When I was in my apprenticeship, some guy came in and asked for an anchor through the air force symbol, and his and his brothers initials. So I drew up the design, showed him, he approved it. I put the stencil on him, told him to make sure everything looked right, gave him some time to make sure. We do the tattoo, and I tell him to check it out, and he says “Oh, my brothers initials are B.D.C. not V.D.C, that’s wrong”. The most I could do was try my best to change the V into a B.
I make sure everyone writes down names and initials themselves, and use that for the design, and have used that anecdote to make sure names are spelled right now.
Actual tattoo artist here. Mistakes are more common than you think, but it’s usually something like a small waver in a line that can be smoothed out. It’s the job of the artist to make sure the final product is beautiful without panicking your client along the way.
That said, I had a girl who wanted her grandfather’s birthday in Roman numerals. I’m very bad at translating numbers to Roman numerals, so I told her to give me the exact set of letters. She did, I typed them up and put together a stencil and had her verify it was correct, which she did. Did the tattoo, she checks it out in the mirror and LOVES it. But then she calls back less than an hour later to tell me two of the letters in the day portion of the date are swapped. Now, I did everything I was supposed to do and I could have told her that it sucks to be her, but I’m not a jerk, so once it was healed I had her come back in and we put a flower over the day for no charge. So now it reads month, flower, year.
My reasoning was that it’s more important for me to have a happy client than to charge for that cover up. Word of mouth is huge in my industry, and she has sent me several new clients since then, so everyone went home happy.
My aunt got a old fashioned compass tattooed onto her shoulder blade because she travels a lot. I think the mistake came when the artist took the stencil off during a break or put it on backwards during a follow up session, so the east and west are flipped, with the E being backwards.
Fortunately my aunt thought it was fitting.
I am the canvas, not the artist. And this is really my fault, but either way. I was drunk and just turned eighteen a couple days prior. I felt misled and disenfranchised about my life so I went to get the word misled tattooed on my chest. Like straight in the center. He draws it up, a couple extra swirls around the edges and I though it looked great. Only problem was it is the word mislead, not misled. I didn’t notice for months until my mother actually pointed it out. I might as well have the word liar tattoos on my chest.
Edit: some good suggestions to fix, and a joke I’ve heard all too often. If I do anything to the tattoo, I’m gonna have a tiny space and put an ‘ed’ at the end. To make it misleaded. Which I think is funny.
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