My colleague Greg Brock reports that of about 2,800 errors we’ve corrected in print so far this year, 460 have involved people’s names. And every time we get a name wrong, we chip away at The Times’s credibility in the eyes of readers. It’s embarrassing when we misspell well-known names. Even worse is misspelling the names of ordinary people who may appear in The Times only once. Their moment in the spotlight is spoiled, and they’re likely to tell everyone they know that The Times can’t get its facts straight.

And now for the Times tips:

• In every interview, ask the subject to spell his or her name.
• If you use another source, online or elsewhere, be sure it’s reliable. (Don’t take a Google poll and go with the spelling that gets the most hits.)
• Don’t just check how we spelled the name last time — our archive is, among other things, a minefield of past errors.
• Copy editors should check as many names as humanly possible.
• If you couldn’t double-check before the first deadline, do it afterward.
• Be wary of names with common variants — Stephen and Steven, O’Neil and O’Neill and O’Neal.
• Don’t rely on memory.

Good advice.

I met LaForge in person in the spring when I gave an error prevention workshop at the Times. (I offered to give the session; he accepted. I wasn’t paid.) I mention him now because the Times Topics blog reprinted a notable memo LaForge sent to editors at the paper. Among other information, it included a list of more than 10 proofreading tips “culled from years of journalism tip sheets.”

LaForge also addressed the issue of mistakes in the Times:

Mistakes in copy have been a problem since Gutenberg, but it is hard to shake the impression that we have been slipping more than usual, especially in articles that are rushed onto the Web site, bypassing some of our traditional steps. Yes, speed is important in the modern news competition. But readers still have high expectations, especially now that they are paying for online news.

And he explained that the paper has a policy of giving every article “at least two reads”:

This era of news publishing has put a greater emphasis on speed, across multiple formats and platforms. Thanks to blogging and continuous updates, more people in the newsroom find themselves in the role of publishing live material. The same forces have increased the workload and distractions faced by reporters, backfield editors, copy editors and producers. It can be tempting to cut corners. You might decide, unwisely, to save some time by bypassing the copy desk. There is rarely a justification for doing so. Our policy is for every article to get at least two reads, preferably one of them by an experienced copy editor, before publication.

And then you should check your work again, or have someone else check it.

But the gold of the post was that list of proofreading tips. Here we go:

• Break your mind-set: Read the copy out loud. Read it silently, one word at a time. Read it backward and focus on the spelling of words. Print a copy. Preview it in a different application. Change the format or the screen resolution. Justify or unjustify the type. Take a break and return to it with fresh eyes.
• Use spelling checkers but don’t trust them. In particular, be aware of homophone confusion: complement and compliment, accept and except, effect and affect, oversees and overseas.
• Memorize frequently misspelled and misused words. Here’s a list: http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/misspelled.html.
• Beware of contractions and apostrophes: their and they’re, its and it’s, your and you’re.
• After reading for content and spelling, proofread separately for punctuation.
• Beware of doubled words at the end and start of a line. A doubled “that” will often slip right by if you let it.
• Double-check proper names and claims of distinction (first, best, oldest, tallest, etc.).
• Double-check little words that are often interchanged: or, of; it, is.
• Check all the numbers, especially any reference to millions, billions or trillions. Do the math. Do the math again.
• Set aside a regular time to review stylebook and usage rules. This includes backfield editors and reporters. If you don’t want someone to change your story on style grounds (and perhaps introduce an error), learn the basics and follow them.
• Be aware of dates and days of the week, especially in advance copy or copy that has been held. Be aware of references to next month/last month around the time the month is changing.
• Make a personal checklist of the things you tend to miss. Use it on every story.
• Have someone else, preferably a copy editor, read behind you.

Good tips, and I of course love that he advocates the use of a checklist. Full post is here.

Thanks, @BriscoPhoto!

Kevin Bottrell is the editor of the Colby Free Press, a daily newspaper in Colby, Kansas.

"I've never written out a checklist for my newsroom, but your stories got me thinking and I do have one I run through every day, I've just never articulated it," he writes. "I quickly realized I need about three different checklists because there are three different areas to my job: writing, editing and proofing pages. I could add a fourth for page design, but I really do that in a more seat-of-the-pants fashion to keep my designs from being stagnant."

Here's his checklist, which covers three core areas for newspapers. He says he'll post it in the newsroom. Way to set a good example, Kevin!

Michael Moon is the journalism advisor at Kinston High School in North Carolina. He uses the below checklist in the journalism course he teaches. Nice job starting kids off with early checklists, Michael! This is a good one:

Amanda McAlpine is the arts and culture editor of the Campus student newspaper at Bishop's University in Canada. She recently saw me speak about accuracy and checklists at a conference held by the Canadian University Press. Now she's created her own checklist, and wrote to say that she's going to get her writers to create checklists, too. Great!

Her checklist is below. Also note that I sent her this after taking a quick look at it: "One piece of feedback is that there are lots of factual items that are used again and again in arts and cultural coverage, and you may want to add those to the final checks before submission section: album title, show name, ticket price, etc. They could go along with 'time and date of upcoming show' etc. But great to see you customized it."

Today's journalist checklist is a little bit different than the others I've shared. Mandy Jenkins is a social media producer for TBD.com, and she's one of the top folks currently filling that role at a news organization. So perhaps it's not surprising that she has come up with a checklist for social media. This is a fantastic addition to the world of checklists. From the post with her checklist:

In the rapid-fire world of social media, it’s easy for a journalist or news organization to make mistakes. Sometimes, these things happen in the heat of the moment, but more often than not the errors seem to stem from a widespread belief amongst journalists that Twitter carries less need for accuracy and accountability than the full-story medium. Recent events have told us otherwise.

I believe there is an ever-increasing need for accuracy and accountability in how we as journalists use social media.

Be sure to read her full post and tell her if you have any additions to the checklist. Here it is:

Emma Jacobs is a radio reporter with WKSG in Ithaca, NY. "My hangups are a little unusual because I'm reporting for radio first and then for web," she said. "A lot of one man band mistakes of omission. The on-the-spot trick is to remember to get stuff like [spelling and] pronunciation on your tape." She's the first broadcast reporter to send in a checklist, and here are her items:

Interview: name & title (spelling)

                Preferred contact info for follow-ups

                Ask what mistakes have been made on story

Recording – Pronunciation

Numbers – double check

                Refind in reports (link in notes)

Language revisions & spelling of web script

Check audio – transcripts of clips

Here's a picture of her checklist:

Madeleine Cummings is a student journalist for the McGill Daily at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She recently saw me speak about errors, accuracy and checklists at the National Conference of the Canadian University Press. She then went home and put together the below checklist.

Cummings altered my checklist "to fit with the types of articles I'm usually assigned at the Daily. Clarifying hometowns is a big one for me — my name has definitely been spelled wrong many times, but seeing my hometown written as 'Peterborough' instead of 'Toronto' was awful! Often it can get confusing with young musicians who move from smaller rural places to big cities…"

Her checklist:

Lisa McLendon is the deputy copy desk chief at the Wichita Eagle. (She's also the vice president of conferences for the American Copy Editors Society.) When she was the head of the copy desk at the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle, she used the below checklist.

"Every cover proof got one of these attached to it," she said. "I think it cut down on picky mistakes, because we had to stop and pay attention to all the little things."

Yes indeed!

Eric Borer is the journalism assistant at the University of La Verne in Southern California. He's also the production manager and the business manager for the school's newspaper, the Campus Times. He got in touch to say the Times newsroom has long been using accuracy checklists to help with production and reporting.

"We have two checklists we use in the newsroom," he said. "One is a pretty no frills post-production/pre-flight checklist that we’ve been using for a long time – at least a dozen years or so. It was originally created by a former faculty adviser, but it’s been updated and tweaked a few times since then … For each issue, I generate one of those checklists for each page of our print edition. Completing the checklist is the student editor’s last step before finishing each page and putting it to bed."

Their second checklist is for student reporters. Borer said students have to use that checklist when they complete each draft.

"We’ve found both checklists to be a big help, particularly the production checklist," he said. "I’ve lost count of how many significant errors have made it all the way through our editing and production process, only to be stopped by that checklist. (In fact, that checklist itself owes its origin to a benign, but very embarrassing, error that made its way onto our front page once."

There you go: yet another testimonial to the value of checklists. Here's the story checklist, and the production checklist is below that:

John X. Miller is editor of the Hickory Daily Record and previously served as public editor of the Detroit Free Press. In addition to providing several sample checklists, he also offered one of the best testimonials I've seen on behalf of newsroom checklists.

"When I was public editor at the Detroit Free Press from 1999 through 2007, we created and used accuracy checklist extensively, and we had data that demonstrated that they worked in lowering errors, specifically recurring errors, with numbers (like phone numbers), odd names (like the Detroit Chamber, not Detroit Chamber of Commerce), misspellings and misidentifications," he wrote in an email. "We created them for every functional job in the newsroom, and the way we produced them (folding cards to be placed on desks in front of people or perforated to be cut apart), demonstrated how newsroom accuracy is an integrated process that involves acknowledgement of everyone's role in the process"

The Free Press created several checklists, one for each role in the process. I've embedded them below. Along with looking at those examples, I encourage you to read the column Miller wrote about checklists. It's important because he provides hard data about the efficacy of checklists:

In the first six months of 2001, the Free Press averaged 44 corrections each month, with the most errors in June — 53. The monthly average for the last five months, July through November, is 31.

In July, we had 25 corrections, more than a 53-percent decrease from the high number in June. Overall, the July-November number of corrections is 30 percent lower than the first half of the year.

I've had people ask me for data about checklists, so there you go. His column also addressed the limitations of checklists:

One way we check to see whether people use the checklists — and reinforce that they can work if used — is to ask if using them could have kept a mistake from being made in the first place. We ask that question, among others, on correction forms that people who are responsible for the error must fill out.

The one area that hasn’t been helped by checklists is errors in fact that are not categorized as misidentifications, misspellings, addresses and mistakes with numbers. These account generally for 44 percent of all corrections. These are errors such as a headline that disagrees with what’s in a story, or saying anthrax is caused by a virus when it’s caused by bacteria.

The document he sent with the checklists included an interesting preamble, which I've excerpted:

We decided on what errors to target by examining the error pattern over the last couple of years, talking with and getting buy-in from staff and experimenting with the checklists. The goal of these accuracy checklists is to remind newsroom journalists, especially on deadline, to verify and re-verify certain information and to help make sure stories, photos and graphics are contextual and work together.

We designed the checklists to cover the key newsroom roles of reporter, assigning editor, copy editor, photographer, photo editor, page designer and artist. The 8 checklists are written in the active voice and are as concise as possible, and are made into a laminated 2-sided card that can be folded to sit atop a desk or computer, or to be cut apart for lists to be used separately.

As far as the Free Press’ accuracy focus, accuracy and fairness are the top newsroom- wide goals. Being accurate is one of the most important responsibilities of today’s journalists. It’s a core value that is fundamental to all that we do. It affirms a newspaper’s credibility, authority and accuracy. Readers expect journalists to get information right and when we don’t get routine information correct, it has a cumulative negative affect on credibility.

And now for the checklists:

Wendy Stonecash is the Data Center Supervisor/Newsroom Administrator for the Palladium-Item in Richmond, Indiana. She uses the below checklist to make sure all of the important parts of an obituary are taken care of prior to publication. Note how many items are here — and therefore how many things can go wrong.

Wendy's checklist:

Sean F. Driscoll is a reporter with the Rockford Register Star in Rockford, Illinois. He sent me a photo of a checklist that he keeps taped to the side of his computer monitor. "It’s simple, but it’s up right where I can see it, and it hits all the high points of things to check," he said.

Simple is good, Sean!

I love that his checklist includes the commands to "Walk away" and "Print story." Both of those steps are essential for me when I'm in the final stages of self-editing and checking. I encourage all of you to add them to your checklists.

Here's Sean's checklist, and his book is shipping soon:

Heidi Hallett is a writer and editor in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. (She also used to run Frog Hollow Books, a wonderful local book store that sadly closed down.) Below is the checklist she created "to edit and evaluate new and existing websites for clients. I cobbled it together last year and it has served me very well." So it's not a traditional accuracy checklist, but it helps illustrate how useful and versatile checklists are. Create yours, send it to me and I'll send you a free copy of my book.

Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You send me a picture of your accuracy checklist, I buy and ship you a copy of the Regret the Error book. That's the deal. (Use my free accuracy checklist as a basis to create your own.)

So far, I'm shipping a book to Steve Buttry and Lori Shontz for their checklists. Buttry's is here and Shontz's checklists are in this post. I'm thrilled to report I've received checklists from additional people. We're off to a great start. Remember to read my initial post to learn how to join in and get a free book.

As promised, I will share all of the checklists I receive. Today's checklist comes from Annie Labrecque, a science journalist in Montreal. Labrecque contacted me long before I made my checklist/book offer. She asked if it was okay for her to use my checklist create a French-language version for science journalists. Of course! Below is what she came up with. Don't worry if you don't speak French — a lot of the terms are similar enough to English that you can see what's going on here.

Her book will be shipped this week.

Annie Labrecque's checklist: Accuracy checklist for scientific article (French)