Dallas Morning News Vilifies Jay-Z

One of the side-effects of the ever-changing media landscape is that various media companies are increasingly operating outside of their comfort zones. Instead of plodding away in the niches they've mastered over a great many years, some media companies think that because the Internet exists, they have a license to dabble willy-nilly in all kinds of newfangled media. The Dallas Morning News launched in print in 1885. Now, 125 years later, the newspaper is dabbling in video content--and screwing up as the discerning eye of Stan Kost recently revealed.

In an e-mail, Kost wrote the Proofreader:

I don't think that Jay-Z is a comic book villain, but The Dallas Morning News may think so. In a recent video about LeBron James and Jay-Z, the latter is described as a "Music mongul" - I'm sure that they meant "mogul". After all, Mongul is this comic book villain.

As you can see in the screen shot highlighted above, The Dallas Morning News F'd up the word mogul in the video's lower third. Stan--you, the Proofreader, any other individual with the smallest grain of cultural literacy and even (as evidenced by the caption in the above screen shot) The Dallas Morning News knows that Jay-Z is a music mogul, not a tyrannical comic book villain (though parallels between the two could certainly be drawn--fodder for a different blog) as this silly typo suggests.

The lesson that should be heeded here, by all newspapers trying to produce video content and by traditional T.V. news outlets, is to proofread those lower thirds and other graphics like it's your job, because, guess what? It is.

The Proofreader thanks Stan Kost for submitting the mistake.

Bad Spelling in North Jersey Corrected

Tenafly, New Jersey. It's not a city or a town. It's not a village or even a hamlet. It's a borough. But just because it's a mere borough doesn't mean its name deserves anything less than accurate spelling on government-issued road signage. After all, Manhattan is a borough and no one would ever allow an official sign to be posted that depicts a misspelling of Manhattan. Tenafly deserves the same courtesy, yet recently, had been deprived of that simple dignity on a sign in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey--until the Proofreader did something about it.

As you can see in the highlighted picture above, this directional road sign situated at the intersection of Hudson Terrace and Palisade Avenue featured a glaring misspelling: "Teanfly." The name Tenafly traces its roots back to 1688 and is derived from Dutch words meaning "ten swamps" after settlers named it "Tiene Vly." That's actually a cool bit of trivia behind the borough's name, something that shouldn't be sullied by incompetent use of the language. What about Teanfly?

Teanfly is derived from sloppy writing and careless proofreading and means nothing--not nearly as cool as Tenafly. How does a mistake like this happen anyway, given that so many sets of eyes view the copy written on the sign before it gets posted? Even the guy who physically put the sign up didn't notice Tenafly was misspelled? Or did he notice the error, ignore it and hang a faulty sign without notifying his superiors?

We may never know. After discovering the error, the Proofreader contacted Peter Rustin, mayor of Tenafly, who confirmed that the sign was the responsibility of Bergen County. In early 2009, when the mistake was brought to the attention of Bergen County Executive Dennis McNerney, a self-described stickler for accuracy, he was reluctant to speculate on its origin.

According to County Executive McNerney, one man, whom he declined to name, makes that particular type of directional road signs for all the counties in the state. County Executive McNerney was unable to say if Bergen County sent the sign maker flawed copy or whether the sign maker screwed up Bergen County's copy. Either way, despite all the opportunities for the mistake to have been noticed and a new sign to have been made, the defective sign was still put up.

As much as that apparent breakdown feeds the perception of government ineptitude, once the mistake was brought to County Executive McNerney's attention, the county executive, to his credit, leaped into action and ordered a new sign. A few weeks later, the directional sign with the misspelling was taken down and replaced with a brand new sign that featured the correct spelling of Tenafly, as you can see in the picture below.

When contacted by e-mail for comment on the posting of the new sign, Mayor Rustin responded, "The misspelling of our name reflected poorly not only on the County but our municipality as well. [This is] One small victory for accuracy and correct spelling!"

Governments are generally thought to waste money doing things the wrong way and, a lot of the time, that's true. While this scenario, in which Bergen County wasted money on a mistake that never should've been made, is by no means the portrait of government efficiency, at least the County acknowledged the mistake and promptly fixed it. Hopefully this kind of response will be a trend that gains traction with all governments, regardless of their size and the size of problems with which they're faced.

This post was originally published on April 2, 2009.

No Eye Candy In This S.I. Screen Shot

Perhaps Sports Illustrated's annual antidote for the winter blues, or "The Swimsuit Issue," grabbed the lion's share of the S.I. editorial staff's attention and proofreading became an afterthought during the lead-up to the issue's publication. A reader has submitted yet another blunder made by the sports mag. This one occurred in a headline on its Web site and is by no means traditional eye candy. It's eye candy maybe only for misanthropic Proofreaders and others susceptible to the inexorable allure of Schadenfreude.

About a month ago, reader T.T. Douglas found the faulty headline pictured and highlighted above and e-mailed the Proofreader the following:

In the headline I believe they are trying to say "outrage" as in "fans are outraged," but instead they typed "outrange." Nice!

Nice, yes. Also nice: T.T. went on to say a couple of laudatory things about the Proofreader--always a great idea.

And yes. T.T., S.I. most definitely intended to to use the word "outrage" (rather than the gibberish "outrange") as evidenced by the correction it made shortly after you noticed the bungled headline. Hopefully this mistake and another recent blunder made by S.I. aren't examples of a new sensibility the magazine is toying with. Stick to the mainstream eye candy you've gotten to know so well over the last 46 years, S.I.: under-clothed skinny babes.

The Proofreader thanks T.T. Douglas for submitting the mistake.

WaPo Mangles Name of Twelfth Month

Over the last couple of weeks, the Proofreader's inbox has received a flurry of mistake submissions. Rest assured, readers--he will get to your submission, if he hasn't done so already. With that out of the way, today's mistake comes courtesy of the discerning eye of reader Global Watch Editor, who caught a Washington Post blog mangling the spelling of December.

As you can see highlighted in the above screen shot taken from WaPo's Federal Eye blog, the name of the twelfth month on the Gregorian calendar is spelled "Demceber." The kindergarten-esque blunder occurred in the Tuesday, January 25th edition of the "Eye Opener," a morning "review of government news." According to the blog's tagline, Federal Eye is "keeping tabs on the government." Similarly, the Proofreader is keeping tabs on "all manner of printed mistakes that shouldn't have been made." In this case, Federal Eye, that means the Proofreader is keeping tabs on you, because the word December is one that a team of professional journalists should be able to spell accurately. Inexplicably, over a week after the error was published, it has still yet to have been corrected.

The Proofreader thanks Global Watch Editor for submitting the mistake.

KOAM-TV Needs Refresher on Contraction and Possessive Forms of It

Holy fuck! Look at all the virtual ink the Proofreader had to waste on that screen shot below, found by Stan Kost on the Web site of a CBS affiliate serving the Pittsburg, Kansas/Joplin, Missouri markets. That baby's lit up like a Christmas tree. Perhaps--since this riveting story was published on December 7--its writers and editors had attended the T.V. station's Christmas party earlier that evening and staggered back to their desks fall-down drunk and desperate to write some news.

That's not the only explanation for this mess, but it might be the most logical one because this onslaught of blunders is literally as incomprehensible as Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's movie career. Kost originally e-mailed the Proofreader to point out one of the five erroneous uses of the contraction "it's" and then e-mailed again saying:

I have also noticed in paragraphs two and three, the word "President" is capitalized. I'm not an owner of an A.P. Stylebook, but if it's the president of a company, shouldn't it be lowercase? In addition, the end of paragraph three has an unnecessary "the" in front of president.

Indeed it does. And, as has been noted here before, the Proofreader doesn't own an A.P. Stylebook, either. But he does own a New York Times style guide, page 270 of which confirms that when used to refer to the president of a company, the word president should be lowercase. 

The Proofreader thanks Stan Kost for submitting the mistakes.

Sloppy Copy on TriMet Sign

The ways in which government incompetence manifests are many and that incompetence, too often, reveals itself to the public in the form of sloppy copy on municipal government-issued signage. The latest found example is courtesy of reader Sean Patrick, who snapped the below photo as the TriMet MAX train he was riding pulled into the Gateway Transit Center in Portland, Oregon.

In his e-mail message, Patrick wrote that the mistake was on a sign "on the door to where the operator sits to drive the train" and "it caught my eye." It caught his eye because the S tacked onto the last word of the sign's second line resulted in the usage of the wrong tense of the verb "to vandalize." The copy should just read vandalize, sans the S on the end. In the second paragraph, the sign writers, editors and makers managed to use "vandalizes" properly, but that by no means negates the mistake above it.

TriMet's offering a cool $1,000 reward to people who report the assault of TriMet workers or vandalism of TriMet property to the transportation agency. Too bad for the Proofreader and Sean Patrick that there's not a similar cash reward up for grabs to those who report the assault and vandalism of the English language on government-issued signage.

The Proofreader thanks Sean Patrick for submitting the mistake.

Headline Blunder First of Two Mistakes In Telegraph Story

In this story on the Web site of The Daily Telegraph, Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares decried the "low level" of intelligence the FBI demonstrated by using his hair and facial features in a digital simulation of what Osama bin Laden might look like sans his usual long beard and turban get-up. (They basically just made Llamazares look older, called him bin Laden and then took the rest of the afternoon off). In a similar vein, the Proofreader is decrying the low level of proofreading skills demonstrated at the Telegraph for allowing spelling mistakes in the headline and body of said article--mistakes reported to the Proofreader by Stan Kost.

As you can see highlighted in the screen shot above, the word politician is short one i, and misspelled "politican." Highlighted in the below screen shot of the article's sixth graph, Kost noticed the word technician was lacking an i, and misspelled "technican."

"I can't attribute it to simply a British spelling variation (as I can with "programme" in the same paragraph)," wrote Kost in his e-mail message, while also marveling at how technician was spelled correctly in the previous sentence and bungled so soon after. The Proofreader's guess: Maybe the i key on the writer's keyboard was sticking or something, because both mistakes are similar in nature. That's an explanation, but not an excuse, because copy editors or proofreaders should've caught these blunders.

The Telegraph offers readers a very thorough online Style Book, however, interestingly, the book mentions nothing on the merit of careful proofreading. Perhaps Telegraph Style Book editors should write that entry--pronto!

The Proofreader thanks Stan Kost for submitting the mistakes.

Noble Cause Debased By Ignoble Proofreading Failure

Wow! This mistake has to be a colossal embarrassment for ReMIND.org, an initiative by the Bob Woodruff Foundation. (Bob Woodruff, you'll remember, is an ABC News journalist who suffered near fatal head injuries four years ago while covering the war in Iraq.) In an attempt to re-brand the "support our troops" phrase as something more than a hollow platitude, the organization awkwardly and unfortunately bungled the spelling of the slogan's middle word, as you can see highlighted in the screen shot below.

We've seen this type of carelessness before in Web ad copy, but those mistakes were made by frivolous companies peddling weight control drugs on the Internet. This one was made by an organization pursuing a noble cause, headed by a high-profile journalist and, presumably, run by many smart people.

And it's not like this is a 2,500 word news story. There are twelve words in the ad that needed to have been proofread. Most fourth-graders could handle that task. And so, probably, could the proofreading sponsors of this blog, so the Proofreader invites everyone to click on their links should you require their services.

Are Women Aroused By Balboa?

Female desire has long been a mystery sought to be solved by men and women alike. So notes the cover story from the January 25th, 2009 edition of The New York Times Magazine in its highlighting of the efforts made by several researchers who are making headway on the topic. It's an intriguing and much debated story that mentions a lot of weird stuff, like people watching monkey porn while being monitored by scientists. Seriously.

But wait a second. On pages 29 and 30 of the magazine, the article mentions the "long-term effects of ginkgo balboa extract on sexual dysfunction in women," as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below. Gingko Balboa extract? What's that? An involuntary "DNA" sample from Sylvester Stallone? That seems way too weird, even for a story hinging on monkey porn.


And it is. Evidently, the article was attempting to reference the ancient and celebrated herb Ginkgo biloba, which has been used to treat everything from tinnitus to dementia. But somehow the word "balboa" followed Ginkgo in the print edition. Online, Times Web editors caught and corrected the mistake, as you can see below in the highlighted screen shot taken from the second page of the story's Web version. If this is a typo, it's one of catastrophic proportions because Balboa and biloba are really not that similarly spelled. The article listed several different things researchers found to be foolproof aphrodisiacs for women, including lesbian porn and video of a nude woman exercising. Seriously. However, nothing about proficient proofreading skills getting women hot was mentioned. Tragic.


This post was originally published on February 5, 2009.

ESPN Ignores Elementary Mnemonic Device

How often did your fourth grade language arts teacher repeat the mantra to you? I before E except after C. Yeah, it's an old, fairly annoying mnemonic device. But heed it and you'll likely always nail the spelling of the many words to which it applies. Ignore it and what happens? You look like an idiot. Just look at what happened in this story over on ESPN.com, submitted by reader Adam Wade.

Brett Favre is no stranger to controversy and, as we've noted before, no stranger to sloppy copy when he's being written about. In this case, ESPN.com bungled the spelling of believes, misspelling it "beleives," as you can see highlighted in the screen shot above. If only fourth grade language arts teachers read ESPN.com's N.F.L. coverage, they'd be rioting. Luckily for ESPN, there's a good chance that, in the history of the Internet, no grade school language arts teacher has ever navigated to ESPN.com's N.F.L. section.

Now, if someone would please come up with a mnemonic device for spelling mnemonic. That would make everyone's life easier.

The Proofreader thanks Adam Wade for submitting the mistake.

New York Times Starts New Year With Headline Blunder

With 2010 underway for fewer than twelve hours and with, apparently, the effects of the celebration of the new year still lingering, The New York Times made a huge mistake yesterday morning when editors bungled the usage of the indefinite article "a" in the main headline for a story on the front page of its Web site.

As you can see highlighted in the screen shot above on the left, "When Everyone is a Honor Student" is how the faulty headline was published. The very first entry on page three of The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says the following:

"Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound: onion; uncle; honor."

It's pretty funny that copy editors published that blunder given that the usage guidelines for words beginning with the aspirate H and the silent H are explicitly spelled out in the style guide's very first entry and even include the word honor. But, it was the morning after New Year's Eve and it's likely several editors and copy editors were nursing mind-crippling hangovers, so a little slack can be cut.

Fortunately, as you can see in the screen shot above on the right, somebody at The Times wasn't totally incapacitated from the previous evening's revelry and was able to catch and correct the error moments after it was published--but not before the Proofreader saw it! 

Happy New Year everyone!

Siriusly Bad Spelling

Just because the Proofreader is behind the wheel of his car doing 85 m.p.h. on the highway doesn't mean he's not on the lookout for printed mistakes. Know that he risked life, limb and a traffic ticket to bring you this holiday-themed mistake.

It's a little blurry since the picture was taken with a cell phone held by one hand, but, as you can see highlighted above, it's a mistake made by Sirius XM Radio. Sirius XM likes to call regular radio "terrestrial," so, perhaps, this is an extra-terrestrial spelling blunder.

Notice that Christmas was erroneously spelled "Chirstmas" by the data entry guy at Sirius XM who enters song titles into its database. If Christmas was too long a word or presented too much of a potential for typos, maybe he should've gone with the famous and shorter Xmas variant.

The song playing was The Beach Boys' version of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and please be assured that the arrangement of this Christmas classic was every bit as bad (if not worse) than you'd expect The Beach Boys to have made it. Not only was it a mistake to have typed the title the way it was typed, but it was a mistake for someone to have ever made a recording of The Beach Boys' version and another mistake for someone to have played it.

Earlier this year, Sirius XM was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, leaving the company, evidently, unable to afford competent proofreaders.

The Proofreader wishes everyone a Happy New Year! He'll see you in 2010 with more printed mistakes that never should've been made.

Yearbook Spelling Mistake Oldie But Goodie

Yeah, it's twelve years old, but here's one for your "HTF did that happen?" file. The cover of La Salle University's 1996 yearbook features a misspelling of the school's name. Wait, what? Repeat: the name of the school is spelled wrong...on the cover of the yearbook.

Unbelievably, the school's name is spelled with one too many Ls: "La Sallle," triple L. And that's La Salle University in Philadelphia, the accredited, legitimate and respected university; not this impostor in the Philippines and not "LaSalle University," the diploma mill that has been shut down and whose founder was indicted on many counts of fraud and sentenced to a prison term.

The error appears in several places throughout the yearbook, in addition to the cover, as you can see from another picture of the mistake below. This is one of the more bewildering (and funny) printed mistakes the Proofreader will probably ever encounter, a true team effort that resulted in a leviathan blunder. How many people looked at the copy and didn't notice the trifecta of Ls in the university's name to be printed on the book's cover? The yearbook staff, school administrators, the company that printed the yearbook, etc. all had a hand in the blunder.

The Proofreader is ceaselessly amazed at how mistakes like this and those on the signs in Hoboken are allowed to be printed on things that are created for the explicit purpose of being looked at repeatedly over a long period of time.

How does a keepsake that will presumably be gazed upon for a generation or two get tattooed with such an egregious miscue? The possibilities are endless and there's really no telling how this one happened. But one thing's for sure: This is a mistake that absolutely never should have been made.

This post was originally published on December 11, 2008.

Missing Spaces, Letters and Extraneous Letters; Small Mistakes

But they're mistakes, nevertheless. As the Proofreader continues cleaning off his desktop, he offers up a two-for-one Thanksgiving post. As you can see in the highlighted screen shot below, this August 18th story in The New York Times about Brett Favre, the N.F.L. quarterback notorious for his Hamlet-esque indecision about retirement, is missing two spaces in key spots and contains an extraneous N making the word "a" an inappropriate "an." This article has since been updated and the mistakes removed.


It's too bad the Times and Apple don't have some sort of extraneous letter-sharing agreement on the books, because within a few days of the above mistakes, on its Web site, Apple lacked an N where it needed one, as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below.

These are small, nit-picky mistakes, but most definitely mistakes that you wouldn't expect from these two industry leaders.

The Proofreader would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, especially all of the professionals who continue making printed mistakes that shouldn't be made.

Proofreader Job Posting Sullied By Lack of Proofreading

This type of irony has been featured several times before here on the blog: A company looking for a proofreader fails to demonstrate competent proofreading ability in the very job posting seeking the proofreader.

Oh, the stupidity! Look at the mess highlighted below: Bilingual shouldn't be hyphenated; What the F is "Sapnish"?; and English and Spanish, two proud languages, are repeatedly demeaned by a lack of capitalization. This posting is patently disgraceful.


These types of job postings at once elucidate a company's immediate, glaring need and expose the surprising (yet amusing) ineptitude of those charged with satisfying that need. Today's example comes from a posting on Mediabistro.com made by the glorified temp agency Adecco Creative, a repeat offender. Evidently, the only thing creative about this temp agency is the myriad ways in which it mangles the English language in print.

Job applicants who see this posting must be unable to help wondering which "world renowned" publishing company would allow itself to be represented so unprofessionally by an outside agency. If any readers can share any info on which company is looking to fill this post, please contact the Proofreader. Adecco Creative never responded to e-mailed questions.

Also, the Proofreader would like to take this opportunity to remind proofreading-challenged companies, like Adecco Creative, that they can seek proofreading services from the good sponsors of this site--just scroll down and look below, in the right column. Click the various ads and see which company might best meet your proofreading and copy editing needs!

Woes Continue For Job Seekers, Job Posters

The unemployment has rate vaulted over ten percent in the U.S. Unemployment benefits continue getting extended by state governments and the federal government. As if that news isn't depressing enough, many employers, either frightened by the continuously growing mob of job seekers or defiantly mocking that mob, continue making silly, juvenile blunders in their online job postings.

Today's example of proofreading buffoonery comes to you courtesy of the H.R. people over at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. As you can see highlighted in the above screen shot, according to a job posting strewn about the Internet, MetLife is looking to hire a Director of "Comminications."

No doubt--the "I" and "U" keys sit right next to each other on the QWERTY keyboard, making for an easy typo opportunity. But this typo could've been averted with careful proofreading. You'd think that, when hiring for a communications position, MetLife would want to communicate to applicants in a way that wouldn't distract/annoy/amuse/infuriate those applicants.

Presumably, careful proofreading and straightening out idiotic communications problems will fall under the purview of the lucky sap to land this gig.

How (NOT) To Proofread a Job Posting

In the same week that the unemployment rate marched past ten percent (for the first time since 1983), yet another employer looking to pluck one of the poor, out-of-work saps from the ever-expanding abyss of unemployment made a copy mistake in its online job posting. The company in question spelled its own name wrong. Dumbasses!

This time, as you can see highlighted in the above screen shot, the culprit is Howcast Media, Inc. Not Howcast "Meida," as the company might have you believe in its job posting on Mandy.com. Howcast is a relatively new Internet company that traffics in how-to videos.

Interestingly, Howcast has a section of its site dedicated to counseling people on how to accomplish various career-related activities. The eternally kind folks at Howcast even have a video that shows people (evidently new to the planet) how to write a résumé.

Behold step nine of Howcast's very own "How To Write a Résumé" video:

If that's a little small for you (click on the screen shot to enlarge), Howcast's advice is, "Spell-check your work." Oh, Howcast. If only you how-to clowns would practice what you preach.

Job-seekers, the Proofreader is going to do a little Howcast impression for a second here by telling you how to apply for this job, but without the nifty video (the Proofreader works on a bare bones budget, okay).

Follow Howcast's advice and not its example when applying for this job. That's right, please make sure your own name is spelled correctly on your résumé. You cannot afford to make silly blunders like this. Not in this job market, damnit! Thank you.

Orgy of Misspellings in Blockbuster Dan Brown Novel

Last week, The Lost Symbol, the latest novel from über popular author Dan Brown, hit the market. The occasion brought Brown's usual critics out in full force, on the Internet and in newspapers, for a round of the usual literary elitism. The scathing criticisms of Brown are, no doubt, many: plagiarism; factual inaccuracy; cliched writing. But, until now, the Proofreader has never had cause to deride Dan--The Da Vinci Code was awesome! Alas, the Proofreader now has no choice but to join the chorus of critics and lambaste the 2000 novel Angels & Demons for its repeated, defiant misspellings.

As always, the Proofreader never singles out the writer for these types of idiotic blunders because they are really the faults of the editors and proofreaders who get paid to catch them. And he doesn't intend to wantonly single out the writer in this instance (these mistakes really aren't his fault), but since Brown's name's on the novel and for SEO reasons, it's imperative to mention his name in the post. Plus, Brown has hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions more on their way into his bank account and he doesn't care if some silly proofreading blogger is mocking one of his books. Now, onto the mistakes, shall we?
As you can see highlighted in the above picture of page 269 of Angels & Demons, the name Alfa Romeo (a famous Italian car brand) is misspelled twice as "Alpha" Romeo. The first of the two names is actually an acronym for "Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili," an Italian phrase meaning "Lombard Automobile Factory, Public Company." Instead, Brown used "alpha," most commonly known as the first letter of the Greek alphabet.

This is a colossal mistake. Do you know how many people read and re-read and proofread a book before it gets published? Or how many times it's read over and over? The Proofreader doesn't either, but he knows whatever the number is, it's a lot. And the above isn't one isolated example of a mistake. The same blunder happens over and over throughout the novel. See here for all of the examples the Google Books preview of Angels & Demons will allow you to see.

Here, have a look at page 174.
Notice that Brown, or a researcher/proofreader/copy editor at Pocket Books (a division of Simon & Schuster), went so far as to research a particular model of Alfa Romeo car--the 155 T-Spark--but didn't double check the spelling of the car's brand name.

Moreover, "T-Sparks" is erroneous. That's a reference to "Twin Spark," a type of engine made by Alfa Romeo that's standard in most of its cars. Making the term plural (T-Sparks) is a mistake.

For a commercially published novel, these mistakes are unbelievable. Evidently, the suits over at Pocket Books were appalled as well and, when the novel was reprinted in 2006, the Alfa misspellings were all corrected. But they still missed the "T-Sparks" mistake. Compare the below pics from the reprint with the above.

Errors Aplenty In Times Baseball Column

Summer. The weather heats up (or warms up, this year), the days are longer, the overall pace of life slows down a little and people take all kinds of measures to maximize their enjoyment of the season. Often, those measures involve a vacation of one type or another. For many, the vacations are all mental. Good, old-fashioned escapism. Perhaps this explains the recent lapses over at The New York Times, because it seems like whatever Times employees have been editing and proofreading the Op-Extra "Heading Home" column have been on a protracted mental vacation. Come on, Times H.R. department--give these people a real vacation so they can refresh, recharge and return to form! The mistakes lately have been silly and elementary.

The first one, an instance of bad HTML, happened in a column published nearly a month ago titled "Fehr's Game." Interestingly, this isn't the first time "Heading Home" has been plagued by bad HTML. As you can see above, in the second-to-last paragraph of the column's first page, the word "all" appeared printed with HTML tags intended to make the word appear italicized. This one was corrected rather quickly, but was unable to elude the Proofreader.


Next, as you can see above, yesterday's installment of the column contained a spelling error that was probably caused by a typo. The writer was looking for the word "choose," but ended up typing the past tense "chose," which turned out to also be the wrong tense.

These mistakes are a shame, because they mar what is an otherwise great column that gives readers a unique perspective of a real MLB player's view of baseball and the world. There's no excuse for these silly blunders that only distract from the fine content. Hopefully, a vacation is in order for the editors and proofreaders in question. Everyone needs vacations, even proofreaders. Check that. Especially proofreaders!

Mistake In Madoff Coverage

No, the Proofreader is not dead. And no, pro journalists haven't stopped making printed mistakes that shouldn't have been made. The Proofreader was just too busy the last few weeks to provide adequate attention to the blog and to the mistakes that have been made. Be assured there are plenty of mistakes to be pointed out, some sent in by readers. Today the hobby resumes with a spelling error in an article on NBC's local New York site. The blunder happened a few weeks ago when Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison.

As you can see highlighted in the screen shot above, NBC Web editors let a misspelling of "shielded" slip by them. The article has since been revised and thus lacks the original error. While Madoff's sentence for fleecing multitudes of investors is 150 years in the big house, NBC Web editors get a much lighter sentence for their offense: Being immortalized on the Internet for infinity for all to chuckle at.

Check back later this week for more mistakes, some big, some small.