Bad Spelling In TVNewser Headline

It's a rather boring blog that covers the rather boring topic of television news. But just because it's a blog and it's steeped in boredom doesn't mean TVNewser is exempt from employing adequate proofreading practices. Still, an apparent lapse in proofreading proficiency occured last Tuesday, as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below.

In the headline of this post, about families of soldiers who were upset that news of their loved ones' deaths was overshadowed by the tsunami of Michael Jackson death coverage in the media, TVNewser editors allowed soldiers to be misspelled "soliders." Headline blunders never cease to confound the Proofreader. The text is in big, bold letters. It's not that hard to give it a quick once-over before clicking the "Publish Post" button, now is it?

The error has since been corrected, but still...Soliders? C'mon, it's a headline. Proofread, damnit.

Copy Editors Distracted By Hot Bodies, Perhaps?

Right on the heels of Tuesday's post is another mistake you can file in your "copy editors distracted by accompanying photo" box, which you no doubt have. (Doesn't everybody?) Unfortunately, though, for the much-maligned Newsday Web editors, the Proofreader has learned his lesson about giving out Mulligans, so there won't be any more of that nonsense.

Lately, there's no shortage of nonsense from Newsday.com, although this mistake is almost excusable. Evidently, like what perhaps happened to the editors out in Portland, Newsday Web editors were so engrossed with the hot bodies in the picture above that they missed the spelling error in the first line of the deck. Hot bodies or not, these are pro journalists, so the mistake is officially inexcusable.

"Hubub" is close, but not right. They were looking for hubbub, two Bs, as everyone who's not busy checking out the bodies of Kara DioGuardi (who is that? Seriously. The Proofreader's not wasting time to Google her name) and Bikini Girl. However, it's possible that the editors there weren't distracted by the scantily clad bodies and, rather, just aren't that competent because they've been making a lot of mistakes lately.

Cool Picture, Uncool Mistakes

A couple of weeks ago, a local news channel in Portland posted on its Web site this very interesting story about unusually low tides off the Oregon coast. Unfortunately, as Midwest correspondent Stan Kost noticed, the third line of the article, a collaborative effort by KGW.com and the A.P., lacked the preposition "of" where it should've been printed, between "remains" and "shipwrecks," as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below.

Now, it's very possible that the two editorial teams made this mistake because they were distracted by the coolness of the art accompanying the story. How often do you get to see real shipwrecks exposed by dramatically recessed tides?

The Proofreader doesn't typically like to give out Mulligans for this sort of thing. But, for the sake of argument, however unlikely it may be, say he gave these editors a mulligan because he liked the content so much. Well, then the Proofreader would expect that these two professional editorial teams would use that Mulligan wisely and get it right the second time around. Sounds fair, right?

Unfortunately, despite the generous Mulligan, they screwed up again. As you can see in the above screen shot, editors caught the original mistake and inserted an "of" where it was lacking. But then, inexplicably, they decided to rephrase the end of the sentence--and made another mistake!

D'oh!

This time they forgot to place a space between "to" and "see." Why they even tinkered with the copy any further is a mystery to the Proofreader. Aside from the missing "of," the copy was fine. Moral of the story: Leave well enough alone. Oh, and don't give out mulligans. Ever.

The Proofreader thanks Stan Kost for submitting the mistake.