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.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 5

After a brief hiatus yesterday, Misspelling Blagojevich Week returns and trudges on for day five, which feels more like the fifth circle of hell than the fifth installment in a series of blog posts. The Proofreader gravely underestimated the task of coming up with something interesting or witty to say about professional journalists misspelling the last name of Illinois' impeached governor for an entire week. Plus, the Proofreader is too busy toiling on other duties today to write something decently thought out.

So, here is today's Blagojevich blunder coming to you courtesy of The Washington Post and Newsweek (a repeat offender here). It occurs in a 2007 post on an odd blog called "On Faith." Scan down to the sixth line of the second graph and the misspelling is highlighted for your viewing convenience.

In fairness, this mistake was made way back in 2007, long before Blagojevich's name was a household one. Nevertheless, with the combined resources of the two publications being so vast, someone should have noticed and corrected the mistake by now.