Story of ‘cummunications’ diploma holder goes viral

Published Jul 29, 2014

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With a degree in communications from one of the most prestigious universities in the world, the irony was not lost on Alex Harris.

While packing up belongings during a house move, his wife noticed an unfortunate spelling mistake on his graduation certificate that had been hanging proudly on his wall for years.

Rather than the first vowel in the word “communications” being an “o”, it instead had a “u” so that it read “cummunications”. Harris earned his mass communications diploma in 2008 from the University of California in Berkeley, which counts Nobel Peace Prize winners among its alumni, so he was taken aback by the error.

He told KLTV: “I heard this big laugh from the other room. She [his wife] noticed that there was this typo. When I saw it, it was just shock. You know, I looked at the keyboard and ‘o’ and ‘u’ are not next to each other.”

His story went viral after he uploaded a picture of his diploma to Reddit, the social networking service and news website.

Harris said the university had plenty of opportunities to ensure the certificate was correct after he had been forced to send two earlier copies back because they were wrinkled. He admitted that he thought the third one “looked great” and hung it in his home for years not noticing the mistake.

He said he won’t not be in a rush to send this one back because it’s become famous. “There’s no way I’m giving this up.” – DailyMail

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