“crime of PUTTING an acute accent on the artist Edgar Degas’ surname in last week’s paper, held his hand up to the offence but pointed out that he had been working on seven different pages under severe time pressure,” Marsh writes. “Doubtless he had corrected many mistakes but the one he MISSED was…”

Did he PUT the accent on, or did he read over an existing accent, thereby MISSING it?

The mistake that still embarrasses me, more than 20 years later, is actively misspelling a word (kernal, instead of kernel). The reason I’m still mortified is that it’s rare for copyeditors to CREATE mistakes.

But it’s not that rare to read right over something, trusting that the reporter got it right in the first place.

Which did he do? I wish Marsh had made that clearer (not good copyediting, that paragraph).

I think it makes a difference.

Marsh wrote; “like most golden ages, this one was entirely mythical.”

I agree w/ him.