Gawker looked through the new, digitized archives of the Village Voice and turned up a gem of an excerpt. John Cook found what he describes as a "hilarious 1956 farewell column from Norman Mailer after he got fed up with all the typos Voice editors were inserting into his copy…"
Here, via Gawker, is an image of the relevant passage:
A for-and-against piece (Topless – or not?, 23 July, page 10, G2) mentioned the French tradition of going topless. Taking a light-hearted stab at Latin, it went on to voice the suspicion that this "cultural more" conveniently allowed French practitioners to look sophisticated and simultaneously acquire an all-over tan. A reader notes that the nominative singular of mores (custom/habits) is actually mos – though it would never be used in this context: "I’m not sure what the solution is for [the sentence in question], but it’s certainly not a matter of the more the merrier." Link
The word sanitiser was inadvertently changed to scientist yesterday when a page 1 story was being edited. We’re sorry for the confusion.
Michael Douglas: In a June 20 Op-Ed on Michael Douglas’ lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute, the name of his character in "Wall Street" was misspelled. It is Gordon Gekko, not Gordon Gecko. Link
I can’t vouch for when this appeared in the Argus Observer, but it appears to be a legit scan of a correction:
Thanks, David and Criggo.com!
We mistakenly suggested that greater gender inequality increases the instance of female mathematicians in a country. Of course that should have been gender equality (6 June, p 7).
AN EARLIER VERSION OF THIS STORY INCORRECTLY DESCRIBED BUFFINGTON’S SPECIAL SUPPORT HOSE AS "MERCURY-LINED." THE HOSE ARE MERCURY-GAUGED, MEANING THAT BAROMETRIC MERCURY IS USED TO MEASURE THE COMPRESSION OF THE HOSE. THEY ARE NOT MERCURY-LINED WHICH WOULD, OF COURSE, MAKE THEM POISONOUS. I REGRET THE ERROR. — SR Link
In our review of “Ruined”, Lynn Nottage’s play, “Political charge” (May 23rd), the phrase “violent genital mutilation” was written as “violent genetic mutilation”. Our apologies.
In Thursday’s 24 hours, Coun. Alex Cullen was quoted as saying the costs of the transit tunnel were “now being lowballed.” The quote should have read “not being lowballed.” 24 hours regrets the error.
The word “not” was inadvertently omitted from a photo caption accompanying a story about dairy farming on Page A1 in Thursday’s Journal Star. The caption should have read: “Despite a dairy industry buyout, Vern Jantzen is not ready to stop dairy farming.”
We incorrectly referred to a gay rights group as “Equity Illinois.” It is actually called “Equality Illinois.” Link
‘Bright Star’: In an article in Monday’s Calendar about director Jane Campion and her film “Bright Star,” a descriptive clause was misplaced. “A person with a lively mind and a fine sense of humor” was intended to apply to Campion, not to a camera crew member.
Owens Lake: An article in Section A on April 19 about a bird census conducted at Owens Lake identified a bird sighted as a dowager. The name is dowitcher. Link
An article on Friday about the uncertainties surrounding swine flu quoted Representative Anthony D. Weiner of New York City incorrectly. In describing the fear gripping people in his district, he said at a House hearing, “You’ll forgive some of my constituents for wanting to get into the fetal position and bathe in Purell.” He did not say “fetal poison.” Link
It’s amazing what the subtraction of one letter can do. For example, misplace an “l”* and you report on the “pubic presidency” instead of the public one. Or “pubic schools.” It’s a common typo, and the Irish Times recently published an amusing essay about the dreaded dropped “l”:
IT HAPPENED yet again yesterday. This time the victim was John Waters’s column on morality and the National Asset Management Agency.
Which was going along nicely, minding its own business, when suddenly a lower-case “l” – that slenderest and most treacherous of letter types – somehow slipped from the copy, leaving the following sentence: “Certainly since the late 1990s, it has been a matter of pubic faith that the economy should be left to its own devices . . . ”
This is a risk that serious newspapers, in which the word “public” will always feature prominently, run every day. It wouldn’t be as big a problem if, for example, it was the ‘b’ that kept dropping out. But then we or the spellchecker would notice that. Whereas the lower-case “l” has a Judas-like ability to slip away unnoticed, with embarrassing results.
A glance through our archive shows that in the recent past, it has excused itself from stories in such as a way as to suggest (1) that bankers’ confidentiality could be overridden in the “pubic interest”; (2) that Ireland needed more investment in “pubic transport”; (3) that the PSNI was “appealing to the pubic”; and (4) that in Philip Roth’s latest novel, Nathan Zuckerman had been left incontinent by an operation and was reluctant to swim in a “pubic pool”.
Not that long ago, either, a letter writer on this page took Tom Humphries to task for suggesting there had been huge “pubic” interest in Roy Keane’s time at Sunderland.
And our GAA coverage has not escaped either. The “Galway hurling pubic” featured in a recent report; while, after an off-field incident at a Dublin-Monaghan football match a while back, it was suggested that “a county chairman and a microphone combined to allow the business to spill over into the pubic domain”.
I know that county chairman, as it happens, and I can assure The Irish Times it was never his intention to allow the business to spill over in the manner suggested. Against which, I’m reminded of an unfortunate photograph that appeared in the latest Monaghan GAA yearbook. It was of a hurling match against Donegal last year, during which a player suffered a temporary wardrobe malfunction, causing the – yes – pubic domain to spill over into the public one.
Anyway, getting back to the missing “l” phenomenon, the worst thing is when it happens in obituaries. In recent years, we have paid tribute in these pages to at least one citizen whose long and distinguished life had been marked by a commitment to “pubic service”.
Perhaps worse, there was another man who was said to have made an outstanding contribution to “pubic life”: which sounds like something you need to treat with special shampoo.
When these things happen in a newspaper, as they will, the instinct of a chief sub-editor is to seize the offending staff members by the short and curlies and impress upon them the need for greater vigilance.
But I would argue that the recidivism rate suggests the fault lies with the word rather than the wordsmiths. “Pubic” is a clearly a sub-prime – even toxic – adjective; and unlike “public” we could do perfectly well without it. Maybe we should just ban the word, and reprogramme the spellchecker accordingly.
Certainly, if there was a Nama for the English language, it would be buying up such terms as “pubic” and removing them from the system, to help restore confidence…
He goes on from there, and it’s worth a read.
Thanks, Ruth!
*Correction May 1: This post originally and incorrectly said a dropped “i” was the source of the public/pubic typo. The result was that I made a typo while writing about a typo. It’s an occupational hazard. Thanks to everyone who noted it in the comments.
From a blog post by a National Geographic copydesk director David Brindley:
…Our article “Arctic Landgrab” highlights the cutting-edge cartography used to map the bottom of the Arctic Ocean—and the race to stake claims on the oil that may lie beneath. Our cartographers spent months on the nine pages of maps in the article, poring over every detail, analyzing and updating numerous data sets, pondering labels, and rewriting captions to clearly and concisely convey complex information. As with all elements of National Geographic, the maps went through several proof versions, were sent to consultants, reviewed by researchers, editors, fact-checkers, copy editors, proofreaders. And yet none of the numerous people who read the maps (myself included) spotted the typo on page 112: “Alaksa” instead of “Alaska.”
…We regret the error and have tweaked our editorial process to help avoid such mistakes in the future.
Thanks, D!
A July 5, 2006, article misstated the name of a float in the previous day’s Independence Day parade on Constitution Avenue NW. The float was called “Sikhs of America,” not “Sheiks of America.” Link
Blenheim Palace was said to be “sequestering chocolate around its grounds”, in yesterday’s news feature about places for visitors to enjoy a credit-crunch British Easter (Cheerful, cultural – and suitably cheap, page 3). Not really. But it was secreting them. Link
In last week’s article on South Africa (“Politics v the law”, April 4th) there was a typographical error in the penultimate sentence, in which an opinion poll is said to have found that “Jacob Zuma’s popularity is unrented, at least among blacks, who still seem to support him overwhelmingly.” “Unrented” should have been “undented”. Sorry Link
Letter sent to Congo: A story published Tuesday about the upcoming corruption trial of former Rep. William Jefferson incorrectly reported that the New Orleans Democrat had sent a letter to the “president of the Republic of Congress” in regard to a project Jefferson was promoting by the U.S. satellite company Worldspace. The letter was to the president of the Republic of Congo. Link
This is an early favorite for 2009’s Typo of the Year. The Daily Universe, a student paper at BYU, recalled and trashed the full printing (18,000 copies) of its Monday edition after discovering a typo. Notably, it was a typo that could have offended the Mormon chruch church. The paper issued a brief apology and also published a lengthy article to explain the error. The apology:
In printed copies of Monday’s Daily Universe, due to a spelling error in a photo caption, the word “apostles” was replaced with a different word. The Daily Universe apologizes to the Quorum of the Twelve and our readers for the error.
Not surprisingly, the mistake was a result of deadline pressure and the spell checker. That’s an all too common combination. From the article about the error:
The Daily Universe took the extraordinary step Monday of re-calling all its 18,500 copies from newsstands around campus and the community to reprint the entire 14-page issue due to a typographical error on the front page.
A spelling error appeared in a photo caption in which the word “apostle” was rendered as “apostate.” In referring to activities at the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last weekend, the caption read in part, “Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities raise their hands in a sustaining vote. . . .”
Once the mistake was noticed, all available copies of the newspaper were removed from the racks and replaced with a sign directing students to view the paper online, said Brad Rawlins, chair of the Department of Communications.
“We are reprinting the paper and we will have the corrected version back on the racks by mid-afternoon,” Rawlins said. “This shows the deep concern we have on the matter. We don’t think this error is glib or cute or humorous. We understand people will take offense to the error. We ourselves are offended as a department for this error. We have a deep regret that it appeared in today’s paper.”
Daryl Gibson, director of NewsNet IT, said this is the first time the paper has been pulled because of a news error in his more than 30 years of working at BYU.
The misspelling was an unintentional error, said Rich Evans, editorial manager for The Daily Universe.
“Our copy editor in charge of the front page, who was under deadline pressure, was using spell check on her page and had misspelled the word apostle,” Evans said. “One of the first options that came up on InDesign’s spell check suggestions was the word apostate. Unfortunately that’s the one she clicked on. It still should have been caught by two more levels of review after that, but again with deadline looming, the worst possible thing happened.”
In interviews Monday morning, staff at The Daily Universe explained the editorial process in which the error occurred. A student photographer who was at General Conference in Salt Lake City wrote a caption to be used with a photo-graph of several members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The photo was then placed into the newspaper layout — accomplished in a software program called Adobe InDesign — by a student copy editor who reviewed the information along with the rest of the paper. The caption was then reviewed again by a professional staff proofreader who checks for additional mistakes. This process is often compressed into a short time due to deadline.
“There’s a million different things that the copy editor has to look for, including headlines, captions, spelling of people’s names, making sure pictures are up to the Honor Code standards and so on,” said Joshua Flake, student news editor of The Daily Universe. “Unless the photographer needs help, the reporters rarely see the caption.” …
Thanks, Ben!
We described the Virgin Mary as dangling the child Jesus on her knee. Dandling was the word we were looking for (The maternal inheritance, 21 March, page 35). Link
In the March 6 edition of the Simcoe Reformer, the word debouchment was spelled incorrectly in the article about a spelling bee. The Reformer regrets the error.
The men in macs sent to spy on communist sympathisers at a farm in Sussex at the height of the cold war were probably hiding in the bushes, rather than in the buses, as we had it (Max Ernst? He’s out picking tomatoes, 4 March, page 21, G2). Link
In yesterday’s World of Wonder page, the heading “typography” should have read “topography.”
There is no such thing as a “bicep”, as this column has pointed out once each year for the last five years. “Biceps” is both singular and plural (‘I still get a big buzz out of being booed’, 14 February, page 11, Sport). Link
