The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Words are a newspaper's best friend. But just like real friends, words can sometimes cause a great deal of embarrassment. I'm talking about typos, those hateful little letter variations that blemish otherwise good articles like a big ugly zit on prom night. There was a time several years back when I wrote a piece about the Flinty submarine park. One sentence should have mentioned the new irrigation system but instead called it an "interrogation system." We got a sarcastic letter to the editor in response. "I don't think it's fair that people should be interrogated just for enjoying a park," it read. "Will the police be shining a bright light in our faces?" Har har. The worst thing about the typo was that it made me look like a complete idiot. (There are times when that is warranted, but this was not one of them). What's the matter? Can't I spell at a junior high level? Well, yes, I can. In the end, all the reader sees is the typo. What he or she does not see are the various factors that conspire to allow that typo to see the light of day. First, I obviously misspelled "irrigation" in my initial draft. As many of you can relate, I'm not overly worried with getting the right spelling the first time around because I know spell-check will come to my rescue. Second, I must have gone through the spell-check process a little too expeditiously. Like a trusting friend, I was too quick to accept my software's recommendation. I did not second-guess my second-guesser. Finally, the mistake was not caught during the proofreading process. My editor at the time, as well as myself, probably read the sentence as it should have read, not as it actually did. This was back when The Reminder was still five times a week, so maybe we were rushing to get the finished product onto the presses, as we sometimes had to back then. Safeguards So there you have it. An evil typo has just penetrated all of our safeguards. You've got to hand it to the little rat. But the really bad part is still to come. The next day, I flip through the paper. Right away, when it's now too late, this stupid, blaring, ridiculous typo pops out at me. It's one of those experiences that makes one feel like the cat is finally out of the bag - you're really just an idiot and now everyone can see it. Then I write up a correction and feel even more stupid. "Yesterday's article should have read 'irrigation system' instead of 'interrogation system.'" Then I re-live the whole ridiculous event the next day as I picture readers chuckling at our red-faced clarification. The park interrogation system is one that sticks out, but there have been other embarrassing typos. Once, thankfully before I was in the editor's chair, we published an article submitted by a local church. The piece was about a basement sale fundraiser. One line mentioned that shirts would be available. The absolute last letter you would want to leave out of "shirts" was left out. Suddenly it's, "Keep the children away from the newspaper!" I have mixed feelings when I see particularly bad typos in other newspapers. On the one hand, I feel for the guilty journalist or editor because I know what it's like to be in their shoes. On the other hand, it's reassuring to be reminded that you're not the only one who makes stupid mistakes from time to time. And when all is said and done, that's all typos are: stupid mistakes. They don't mean reporters and editors are incompetent or careless; it just means they're human. As I once told someone, "If you make a boo-boo at work, there's a chance nobody will even know. If I make a boo-boo at work, it's there in black and white for all to see." Local Angle runs Fridays.
