Caption Of A Typo

WTF is going on over at Newsday.com? Lately, editors there have been screwing up headlines likes it's their job and now they let some sloppy copy get printed in a photo caption. As you can see highlighted in the screen shot to the left, the caption underneath the picture of the neatly-dressed music teacher claims that this fine, upstanding gentleman "could loss his job next year." Actually, he could lose his job next year and, if he does, that will then be considered a "loss." This article was published on the Newsday Web site on March 26th and, as of this posting, has still not been corrected.

If the Proofreader can opine for a moment here...the euphemistic language (loss, lost, losing, etc.) used in association with people getting fired from their jobs is driving the the Proofreader up a wall because it sounds like a total misnomer. It's not like people wake up bewildered one day and say, "Oh crap...where's my job? Anyone know where my office is? I forget where I work," like they're saying they can't remember where they parked their car. All these people got fired, or laid off through no immediate fault of their own. That means they had their jobs taken from them--they didn't lose them. This practice of sugarcoating is the equivalent of somebody who gets car-jacked casually noting, "Yeah, I lost my car today." Perhaps the spate of recent copy errors over at Newsday is a result of some proofreaders having had their jobs taken from them.

Wayward Apostrophes in Newsday.com Headline

Sloppiness is becoming a hallmark of the entertainment editors over at Newsday.com. A few weeks ago, they seriously bungled the word Oscar in the headline of a story about The Academy Awards. In the headline of an Associated Press story about quarreling lovers Chris Brown and Rihanna, published on March 12th, they messed up again.

As you can see in the above screen shot, highlighted for your viewing convenience, the editors were clueless about where to place two apostrophes. By Newsday.com's account, the stars of multiple Chris Browns have fallen and the stars of multiple Rihannas may also fall. That would be an entirely different story than what appears underneath this faulty headline.

Rather than plural possessive proper nouns, those should be singular possessive proper nouns. Shame on Newsday.com copy editors for allowing the mistake to be published, but give them some credit for at least putting those wayward apostrophes in their proper places and not letting the blunder linger online forever. Pointing out mistakes and letting them linger forever on the Web is the Proofreader's job, thank you.

Was Geronimo Tougher Than Pneumonia?

Iconic Apache warrior Geronimo is famed for his unparalleled toughness on the battlefield, but was he so tough that it took pneumonia over two decades to kill him? An unclear passage from a February 19th article in The New York Times, titled "Geronimo's Heirs Sue Secret Yale Society Over His Skull," seems to suggest that Geronimo, who died in 1909, lived his last 23 years dying of pneumonia while imprisoned.
As you can see in the above screen shot, highlighted for your viewing convenience, the last sentence of the article's eleventh paragraph reads, "He finally surrendered, with only 35 men left, to Gen. Nelson A. Miles on the New Mexico-Arizona border in 1886 and spent the rest of his life in prison, dying of pneumonia." The article and the passage were brought to the attention of the Proofreader by reader Don Martin, who, in an e-mail message, took issue with the vague phrasing of the sentence. Wait, is it even possible for a human to have pneumonia for over 20 years before succumbing?

Yes, in theory. But it's not likely and it has nothing to do with how tough a person is. Geronimo could have been afflicted with some rare, lingering form of pneumonia, bronchitis or other respiratory condition such as bronchiectasis, the symptoms of which can develop very gradually. Or he could have suffered from hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a lung disease that's been known to wax and wane in patients for years.

It's even possible Geronimo suffered from tuberculosis, to which Native Americans are particularly vulnerable, or M kansasii, a chronic pulmonary infection that resembles TB and about which almost nothing was known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All of these conditions could have easily been mistaken for pneumonia by a doctor determining the cause of Geronimo's death for his death certificate, especially if an autopsy wasn't performed on his corpse. Due to the prevalence of respiratory infections at the time, pneumonia was commonly cited on death certificates, much like "heart attack" is a common cause of death cited on death certificates these days.

Regardless of whether or not Geronimo died a long, slow death from pneumonia or another respiratory condition, the copy in the Times story could have been less vague or even broken into two, more clear sentences. As Times deputy news editor Philip B. Corbett astutely noted in a recent blog post, "periods don't add to the word count."

The Proofreader thanks Sidney K. Stein, M.D. and reader Don Martin for sending in the vague copy.

Newsday.com F's Up Oscar

Newsday, a New York City-area paper, printed a significant blunder in a headline on its Web site today. The mistake was captured and submitted by an anonymous reader. As you can see in the highlighted screen shot below, in a headline for a story about Hugh Jackman's sexiness (naturally, the very definition of "news") Newsday Web editors wrote "Hugh Jackman is Ocar's sexiest host." In an e-mail message, the anonymous reader wrote, "Oh, really? Who the hell is Ocar?"


Given that on Sunday Hugh Jackman will host the 81st Annual Academy Awards show, there's no doubt the editors made an attempt, however feeble, at "Oscar," the popular nickname for the Academy Award of Merit. The derivation of the Oscar nickname is up for debate. But who the hell is Ocar?

Either a bunch of California realtors, a high-ranking military office or an anarchist radio station. OCAR is the acronym used to refer to the Orange County Association of Realtors, the Office of the Chief, Army Reserve and Orange County Anarchist Radio, a "truely independent" Internet radio station based in Califorinia. Yep, the radio station may be independent of corporate America, but it's not free of spelling mistakes. That "truely independent" is their mistake, featured in the logo on its Web site, not the Proofreader's (click the link above to check it out). Also, there's no evidence that the radio station is affiliated in any way with the realtors. One thing we do know, though, is that Ocar is in no way affiliated with Hugh Jackman or The Academy Awards. Duh, Newsday should have known this too.

The Proofreader thanks the anonymous reader for submitting the mistake.

Disappointing Spelling Mistake in Times Op-Ed

Vol.CLVIII...No. 54,592 or the February 20, 2009 edition of The New York Times contains a spelling error in an Op-Ed column by recently-retired N.F.L. head coach Tony Dungy. The mistake was published in both the online version of the article and the printed version in the newspaper.

In the second line of the second paragraph of an article titled "Diversity Everywhere but the Sidelines," the word disappointing is misspelled "disapointing," lacking one of the two Ps in the word, as you can see in the below screen shot.

Also, if you have the print edition of the paper, turn to page A31 and you can see the mistake in the article which appears at the bottom of the page. Or direct your attention to the highlighted picture below.

The New York Times Op-Ed page is consistently a veritable marketplace of interesting and usually well-expressed ideas, which is why it's disappointing when these types of minor errors sneak by editors. And, while Tony Dungy was a great N.F.L. coach during his career, he has much room for improvement as an Op-Ed writer, the spelling mistake notwithstanding, because that was the fault of several people. Perhaps he shouldn't have quit his day job. Typically, the Times publishes better-written, better-thought-out Op-Ed columns. This one was subpar on two levels.