I met with one of my knitting students today because she was
having an issue with the shawl collar on a sweater.  When I saw the knitting, I immediately saw
the issue:  the shawl collar looked as if
it had slid down the right front of the sweater!  She had done a beautiful job with the
increases and shaping – it was just that it was growing off one side of the
neck opening! 

We laughed, of course. 
And then I frogged it for her and got it back to the row after the
pick-up-and-knits (before the shaping). 
I counted out the stitches (yes, it was the right number) and had her
sit beside me while we “marked” it (i.e. counted out the knitting along the
stitches without actually working them) and it became clear that this was very
odd shawl collar shaping!  I studied the
pattern and puzzled til my puzzler was sore. 
And then I compared the
numbers for the other sizes with those of the size she was working.  It looked something like this:

Row 1:  Knit 92(106, 120,
134) sts, turn

Row 2:  Slip 1 st,
knit 19(16, 23, 30) sts, turn

Row 3:  Slip 1 st,
knit 13(20, 27, 34) sts, turn

Row 4:  Slip 1 st,
knit 17(24, 31, 37) sts, turn

Continue increasing 4 sts each row before turn 14 times

(Something like that)

Okay, for fun you can study it and see what is wrong with
this pattern.

Hmmmmmm?

Ready?

Notice that the numbers for each size increase by 4 each row
— except for the smallest size which begins with 19 and goes to 13!!  Misprint! 
It should be 9 not 19!

Mystery solved!  The
extra 10 stitches at the beginning slid the whole collar to the right from the
get-go!  (unfortunately, my knitter was
making the smallest size, of course)

Curiouser and curiouser, though, another knitter (at whose
home we were meeting) happened to own the same pattern book.  She fetched it and found that in her copy, the 19 was a 9 as it should
have been!  The books looked identical – both hardback copies
with identical pictures, pages, etc. 
Except for the critical 19-that-should-be-9.  Kind of creepy!  They were obviously (though not so
obviously!) different editions.

Moreover, knitters beware — typos happen!