Things that keep editors awake at night
This is an amusing corrections column from the Vancouver Courier:
We like being alive. Really like it. Especially on a day when pop icons (and stalwarts of a distant childhood) Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson both shed this mortal coil. Sure, she became kind of kooky, and he became positively creepy, but like David Carradine before them, or Ed McMahon, you expect them to continue forever simply because they were always around when you were, um, younger. Hell, we’re even sad about yesterday’s passing of Romeo Leblanc, and we barely remembered he was still alive.
If there’s an upside to what seems like a holocaust of the celebrity pantheon, it’s that it puts the little things into perspective, like recent mistakes in our paper. What’s a misspelled word or grammatical mistake when LIFE (!) is out there to be lived, and the Reaper is out there ready to snatch away everyone who was on TV in the 1970s. At least that’s our philosophy, as we run down a list of recent slips and Homeric nods.
In our June 19 issue, we got a name wrong in the photo cutline for a well-read story on scooters (online version here). For the record, the name is Tootill, not Toothill.
On page 19 of the same issue, we used an incorrect photo box. Perhaps this is of interest only to photo box fans, but it should be a rounded box, not square. (These are things that keep editors awake at night.)
Staying in the same issue, on page 36 a headline used "defense" when it should have been "defence." The latter is Canadian usage, the former American. (These are the things that keep editors awake at night. That and their own mortality.)
Moving to our June 24 issue, a headline about the present and past Charles Tuppers used "minster" when it should have been "minister." (These are things, etc. Mortality.) The online version has not yet been fixed because of a server issue.
One page 10 of the print version, the banner at the top of the page should have been flush left. (Things!)
On page 16, the banner read "news" when it should have read "garden." (Mortality!)
And there we go. We live, we breathe.
And to Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner, Rich Little, Walter Cronkite, Lynda Carter, Raquel Welch, Merv Griffin, Charo, Paul Williams, Henry Winkler and Susan from Sesame Street, and many others, be careful…please
Thanks, Barb!
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