Editorial of March 7, 2024
Tepees, Tupacs, Tipis and…Typos
In our present world, newspapers, it seems, bear the somewhat appalling reputation for the most typos—typographical errors, or misprints—in the world of print. This, no doubt, is due in part to the fact that as long as humans and speed are involved in producing journalism, mistakes will happen. But there are several other culprits, too, that impede our reading pleasure with oft inaccurate, at times badly punctuated and, in the end, totally incoherent words, phrases and, alas, facts.
Some typos are embarrassing, some are incorrect, some are simply hilarious and some can create havoc. Many typos are the result of the work of our modern-day journalists—writers, editors, typesetters, fact-checkers who are working in understaffed offices under undue pressure to get into print what is probably touted as “breaking news” but is, in fact, hastily thrown together and very often un-fact-checked news, perhaps re-slanted. A reasonable number of typos are created as well by the common use of Spellcheck, the online tool that checks—and purportedly fixes—texts for spelling, grammar, punctuation, and style. Often considered a companionable and easy-to-use proofreader, the program does not always come up with a correct fix. Hence another typo or two. Spellcheck can be used in school papers, too, but our younger writers should be aware of the mistakes that can result, making their work not as good as it could have been had they themselves taken charge of their grammar, punctuation and spelling. In fact, Spellcheck can be useful for highlighting issues, but it should be we ourselves who make the decisions.
Most journalism typos are harmless, if indeed annoying, and they are usually corrected quickly, printed in the subsequent newspaper’s corrections, or errata, column. Similarly, typos in tweets and other social media, which are unusually numerous and vastly more trivial, as their writers are not particularly prone to proofing, are fixed by a simple follow-up message.
Some typos have created big problems. A costly mistake by our own NASA, in the summer of 1962, is a pretty good example. On July 22, the space agency launched Mariner 1, an American-made spacecraft designed for the country’s first planetary flyby of Venus to measure the planet’s temperature and magnetic fields. Five minutes after its Cape Canaveral lift-off, errors in communication between the rocket and its ground-based control systems caused the rocket to veer off course, threatening the North Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes. A range-safety officer ordered the rocket to self-destruct, which it did. Its mission lasted 294.5 seconds and cost $18.5 million. Worse, its failure was attributed to a typo, in this case a misplaced hyphen, in the computer program of its guidance system.
Elsewhere in our journalistic world, albeit “The Guardian” can lay claim to the most and the rudest typos, all of which the UK rag, although always swiftly apologizing for them, holds next to its heart, “The Freeman’s Journal” has a few as well. Notably, some years ago our lofty paper ran a curious headline on top of a story about the Oneonta Public Schools: they, it was stated, “needed more Tudors.” Hard to find these days.
Grammar and punctuation play a part, too. The occasional loss of a comma can speedily change a meaning (two classy books, Eats Shoots and Leaves / Eats, Shoots, and Leaves and Let’s Eat, Grandma / Let’s Eat Grandma come to mind), as can the universal misuse of the apostrophe, the semi-colon and the occasional dual spelling of some words, but these are different stories.
Newsprint is unforgiving. We at “The Freeman’s Journal” do not welcome typos; but they do happen. We continue to strive both to eliminate them and, when egregious, to right them as soon as we can.