Regret the Error

The Style Invitational, a Washington Post Sunday humor column, decided to use this embarrassing/hilarious Post correction as inspiration for a contest where readers were asked to create fictitious corrections for the paper. Loyal readers of Regret might also remember this earlier use of the correction format for a laugh.

Here’s the winner of the Post’s contest:

Due to a transcription error, the Indian prime minister’s wife at
Tuesday’s White House dinner was incorrectly described as wearing "a
sorry ensemble." (Submitted by Elden Carnahan, of Laurel)

First runner-up:

In
last week’s Book World, authorship of the anonymous poem beginning
"There was an old man from Nantucket" was incorrectly attributed to
Emily Dickinson. (Dennis Lindsay, Seabrook)

Third runner-up:

A June 4 news article
described White House senior adviser Karl Rove as "a vicious old
bloodsucker in the thrall of corporate paymasters." Mr. Rove is 54. (Mark Eckenwiler, Washington)

Second runner-up:

The
reviewer of "Monster-in-Law" incorrectly described the film as "two
hours of my life I’ll never get back." The film’s actual running time
is 101 minutes. (Brendan Beary, Great Mills)

Read some of the other entries here.

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