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!
#1
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.
Image source: anon, Andrej Lišakov/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#2
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.
Image source: taraquinntattoos, Andrej Lišakov/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#3
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.
Image source: malprintemps, Orlando Dominguez/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#4
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.
Image source: ThePrussianGrippe, ArtHouse Studio/Pexels (not the actual photo)
#5
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.
Image source: lacubriously, John Tuesday/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#6
I was tattooed by a friend who was doing his apprenticeship at the time.
I got the Albert Camus quote “in the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
He puts the stencil on, looks great, traces the words, fantastic and crisp lines. Fills in the last r for the quote and this is when I read it out loud to myself and start laughing my head off.
He had tattooed the word “found” twice. I guess when he was tying to sort out the layout he put it at the end of the top row and the beginning of the second and forgot to remove one.
He offered to cover it up then and there or come back when it was healed to fix it. Told him we might as well get it done now and he was able to cover it with a bird. Can barely tell. He also gave me the whole tattoo for free so that was really fun.
Tl;dr read your tattoo out loud if you’re getting script.
Image source: Eli_1988, GRAHAM MANSFIELD/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#7
I saw a girl at a Utah jazz game with “housewife” tattooed on the back of her neck in Kanji. I commented that that was a coolly Avent garde bit of work and she got all confused. Turns out she requested “wild girl” and got messed with somewhere along the way. This was like 2001, so it might have been hard to look up at the time, who knows. Anyway, we were both embarrassed and I regretted bringing it up.
Image source: elhoffgrande, Curated Lifestyle/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#8
“not an artist, but….”
My friend got a tattoo of his last name down his ribs. Instead of “Schafer” it read “Shcafer” The guy says “uuuhhhhh I’m gonna need you to come in next week to fix this up” He made the c and the h look fancier so that the could morph into the other. If you look close enough you can tell but at a glance it looks alright.
Image source: CaptAhabsMobyDick, Tahir osman/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#9
Not a tattoo artist, but lived with one once. Another roommate rode a Harley, and wanted the Harley eagle and shield on his arm. So the artist found an ad in Easyriders and freehanded a stencil. It looked pretty nice, so he did the tattoo. The bikers brother came over the next day and said “Hey, doesn’t Harly have an ‘E’ in it”? Good times.
Image source: cryptonautic, cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo)
#10
Years ago I worked with a gal who had a huge tattoo on her chest, above it had not one but three misspelled words. Recive the love your entitled too have. I asked her what was her intent with the three misspellings, Three? She asked. Me “Receive, You’re, To”
I asked her if her tattoo artist had double checked with her about the saying, and she said he asked her so many times she got mad and told him to just F’ing tattoo what she had written down. Not the brightest bulb for sure.
Image source: Fun-Yellow-6576, Pablo Merchán Montes/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#11
I had this happen. I had my friend write out a saying I wanted 4 times at varying sizes. When my artist and I looked at it we decided to go with the one on the opposite side of the paper because it was the biggest. Well we never vetted that one, I mean who would spell a word wrong in the fourth sentence right? Well after it was inked in and I took a picture we noticed and we both had a bit of a nervous laugh. In the end he fixed it by slightly shifting the overlaying image and it’s not even noticable now.
Image source: Valkxb70, Pablo Merchán Montes/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#12
My sister got a tattoo across her chest/collarbone area with an incorrect “your/you’re” in it. She was so happy to have gotten the tattoo and posted on social media. I pointed out the error and asked if her tattoo artist would be able to fix it (I should have mentioned that in private but girl, you’ve got a grammatical error on your collarbone for the rest of your life!). Because of the font choice and spacing, there’s no way to fix it without messing up the aesthetics.
And she confirmed that her artist had shown her in a mirror a drawn-on version of the tattoo (I assume this is normal practice as I don’t have any tattoos). Neither of them caught the issue.
Image source: OSUJillyBean, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#13
I know someone that ended up with “granpa” on their arm with a cross that’s proportions were way off. Lol.
Image source: CalendarAggressive11, Andrej Lišakov/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#14
As far as I know I’ve had no mistakes in the 10years I’ve been tattooing with the exception of two out of my control. There was a Chinese name in script, the middle name was Yuun but I was emailed Yuin.
We approved the fonts, double checked everything multiple times and like stated in other comments our shop has a spot on the waiver stating we aren’t responsible for spelling/ representation of symbols or foreign lettering. Thankfully the cursive chosen was easy to alter but he made a huge stink about it trying to get money back and it took multiple emails to get him to just fix it.
Image source: Shwabbles, Tahir osman/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#15
My shops apprentice tattooed “mean jean” instead of “mean Gene” on a pissed off biker guy. I have no idea how it was fixed, it was big block lettering on the backs of his biceps. I watched the man approve the spelling three times… THEN flip his table.
Image source: JSqueaks, Matt Jerome Connor/ Pexels (not the actual photo)
#16
I know of a tattoo where the artist accidentally misspelled a world – he wrote a lowercase e instead of a lowercase c. He went over it with skin-colored ink, and only charged her half. You can still see it. I would’ve wanted the tattoo free lol.
Image source: womanlizard, Andrew Leu/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#17
My artist forgot a word in my tattoo. I honestly didn’t blame her for it, I looked at the stencil many times and we both missed it. honest mistake. as soon as I realized we started coming up with ways to fix it. thankfully it was a pretty easy fix! then we set a time for me to come back (two days later, she came in on a day off for it) and she fixed it for free. she was SUPER apologetic and embarrassed and honestly so was I, but it all ended up fine. the tat is different than I imagined but I still like it. the fix was totally free but I still tipped her for it, tho I don’t think she expected me too at all. I still go back to her. i’d say any respectable artist would behave the same way.
Image source: Neat-Anxiety-6103, Jordan Whitt/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#18
When I was 18, I was in a relationship with a tattooist and helped out in his shop sometimes. One time, a man came in wanting a word tattooed on him. The tattooist drew it up, the customer was happy with what he saw, and I made the stencil (by hand, the tattooist was too cheap to get any machinery) After placing the stencil, the man confirmed he was happy with the tattoo and placement
None of us had noticed that the tattooist had missed a letter (imagine “puple” instead of “purple” – that wasn’t it but it was like that) until the tattoo was partly completed – using the same example, he’d got as far as tattooing “pup” when it suddenly dawned on the customer that it wasn’t right
The tattooist tried to blame the customer for not noticing beforehand, but there were 3 of us who could and should have noticed. He ended up turning the “p” into a capital “R” and putting the rest of the letters after to make the spelling correct. It was the best fix he could have done on the spot, but it honestly looked awful and I was ashamed for my part in it
He wasn’t a good tattooist. I’m glad that I left him, and that he left town.
Image source: anon, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#19
I was into my first 3 month as a full time artist at a shop, and we just got a new thermal imager (what makes stencils) and I was the first to break it in.
I was in a hurry so I wrote the image out, traced it and placed it on the guys arm. We both looked in the mirror to see if the spelling was correct and started the tattoo.
What I didn’t realize was that the images was printed backwards and he was about to get his tattooed spelled correctly, just entirely backwards. So in the mirror it looked perfect and on skin…. well, not so much.
So I’m finishing up the image he wanted and am about to start the lettering and he yells, “HEY, YOU’RE ABOUT TO TATTOO ME BACKWARDS!” I look and sure enough he’s right.
It was a close call, I decided not to charge him and we reprinted the lettering but this time not backwards.
Image source: ImFromIndiana, Getty Images/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
#20
I’m one of the dumb ones. Came into tattoo shop with a scripture I wanted tattooed on. Just the reference, not the whole sentence. Guy triple asks me if I’m sure it’s correct as he’s about to start working. I was slightly annoyed the third time he asked but I pulled out my phone to check. I was wrong.
Image source: NurseyMcNurseface, Lesia/Unsplash (not the actual photo)
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