We Regret the Error
I'm a journalist by trade, and one of the things that truly bothers me about journalism is ...how terribly written so many articles are. I don't just mean the Jason Blair-like made-up articles, I mean the awful day-to-day research and writing.
The web site "Regret the Error" publishes an annual compilation of the worst of the worst in the form of the corrections that papers publish in their attempts to right the wrongs. Here are my favorites from their 2005 roundup.
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This jolly typo/correction comes from the Liverpool Daily News in England:
Technology has revolutionised most of our lives in recent years and the media has particularly benefited from developments in IT and communications. But all technology should always be treated with a degree of caution. This was a lesson brought into sharp focus last week following a review of the Welsh National Opera's double bill performance of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at the Empire Theatre. The problem arose when the computer spell checker did not recognise the term "WNO" (Welsh National Opera). A slip of the finger caused it to be replaced with the word "winos". All stories in the Daily Post go through a series of checks for error, but unfortunately this one slipped through the net. It just goes to show that it's hard to beat the good, old-fashioned dictionary.
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A correction from the [London] Guardian:
In a Comment piece headed, We must not forget how war was won, page 22, May 7, we wrote of "the genocidal destruction of the Jewish and gypsy (sic) populations". Gypsy takes a capital G. The stylebook says so: Gypsies u[pper]c[ase], recognised as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, as are Irish Travellers. The point has been made in corrections on the following occasions: December 7 1999; March 3 2000; May 4 2000; March 3 2001; July 25 2001; August 1 2001; September 1 2001; December 14 2001; February 19 2003; September 29 2004; March 3 2005.
And then there's this one, from Us magazine:
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To see the full roundup check out Crunks '05" at Regret the Error.
Posted December 19, 2005 11:09 AM
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