\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Some common events connect thousands of citizens of Las Vegas and the surrounding area . . . We thought he was overly critical of our efforts. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He” is a customer, a reader who noticed a particularly egregious error in a photo caption in Wednesday’s Optic.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We make mistakes (do we ever!) and it’s a sign of responsibility to admit them without belaboring them. Though all of us in the newsroom may have a different way of handling making corrections, my advice is not to resurrect the error.<\/p>\n
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s say, for example, we wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The meeting was hell in the principal’s office.” Fair enough, aside from the chance it could be true, it needs to be corrected, particularly if we miss it and someone catches it and calls us about it. My advice to the Optic writer would be to admit we made a mistake, write what it should have been, but not repeat the error.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 In the case of the critical customer who blasted us for a page one error Wednesday, I’ll not be spelling out the error, but if you’re perceptive and can see through all the contractions, you may get the drift. Our goof is an error of fact, which I believe flatters the subject of the article. I like to think of it as not an error at all but rather a metaphor, a figure of speech that calls something something else. Imagine a minister saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I’ve married hundreds of people.” Does that a polygamist make?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Anyone who delivers his or her labors five days a week, including holidays, is bound to get criticism for an occasional misspelled name. But we also realize that’s the nature of the beast. Several thousand people read several thousand words in our paper each day, and we hear about it when we goof. It’s not strange that newspaper people seldom receive calls about something well done, since goodness isn’t newsiness. And we don’t generally write about the 9,999 men who don’t kill their wives.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Is our error destined to make it to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tonight Show,” where Jay Leno displays funny headlines and typos? Will my belaboring the issue increase the number of visits to our office from readers who still assume we didn’t know about our error?
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I’m minting an ancient proverb about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of moveable type: The newspaper you had at the plant when you hollered \u00e2\u20ac\u0153run the presses” is different from the copy that arrives at your home, typos glaring, ready to be pounced upon by irate readers. There’s a printing company in Alameda, Calif., Excel Graphics, which apparently receives example of typos, enough to fill issues of its quarterly newspaper. A recent issue illustrates why sometimes it’s better to simply correct the error without repeating what caused the embarrassment in the first place, loaded with errors in print and in some cases, attempts to rectify them, which make them worse.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Here are a few samples:
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A columnist wrote: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I originally wrote, \u00c5\u2019Woodrow Wilson’s wife grazed sheep on the front lawn of the White House.’ I’m sorry the typesetters left out the word \u00c5\u2019sheep.'”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A recipe column: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153An inaccurate number of jalape\u00c3\u00b1o peppers was given for a southwestern chicken salad recipe. The recipe calls for 2, not 21 jalape\u00c3\u00b1os.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A newspaper: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was incorrectly reported that today is T-Shirt Appreciation Day. It is Teacher Appreciation Day.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A bar association journal: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lunch will be gin at 12:15 p.m.” The correction: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It should be 12 noon.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 A church bulletin: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The minister will not deliver his sermon today. He was injured while pushing his paramour.”
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 I realize I continue to belabor the matter of the Optic’s error, which you’ll need to ferret out for yourselves. We really try to avoid misteaks like this one.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Typos and language curioditties fascinate me, as they do many people.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 But that idea gives birth to more than 11,924 possibilities for future columns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Some common events connect thousands of citizens of Las Vegas and the surrounding area . . . We thought he was overly critical of our efforts. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He” is a customer, a reader who noticed a particularly egregious error in a photo caption in Wednesday’s Optic. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 We make mistakes (do we ever!) and it’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}