Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The worst typo ever?

The Red Room asked readers about the worst typo they've ever seen. In the early '70s I wrote for a local weekly newspaper. On one fateful deadline night, a reporter (not yours truly) wrote his account of a planning board meeting, and the editor rushed it through to print without giving it much of a look. But the reporter had embedded a parenthetical note to the editor, not meant for publication, mentioning a member of the public who'd attended the meeting. The gist was that the gentleman, who was named, was a loudmouth, a fool, and the town drunk. Naturally, the article was published with the private note intact, and it caused quite a commotion. The way I heard about it later, the newspaper's owner privately apologized to the man, who in turn acknowledged the basic truth of the article as printed.


8 comments:

Brooke from The Bluestocking Guide said...

Wow, that's embarrassing. I'm sure it wasn't funny then, but it sure is funny now.

sarah corbett morgan said...

WOW. Pretty amazing story, Bob.

Jane Kennedy Sutton said...

I like how the man acknowledged the truth of the article...and he didn't even sue the paper:)

Anonymous said...

I just had a tupo in my blog the other day. I typed "ass" instead of "add" and didn't catch it until the next day.

Stephen Tremp

Helen Ginger said...

I love the last line - that the guy admitted it was the truth.

Helen
Straight From Hel

Ruth L.~ said...

Interesting... in my "wisdom," I've refrained from writing parenthetical comments to the editor in newspaper articles because I could only imagine it being overlooked in the rush of deadline... however, my potential comments would have been more benign. Still...

Christina Rodriguez said...

One would think no one would need an annotation to let them know of the town drunk. Usually they make themselves pretty well-known!

Once I was creating and illustrating a wordsearch activity for a children's book client, and used a free wordsearch generator for the writing part. Good thing I double-checked my work, because a painfully visible word was accidentally created: PEE. I'm sure the kids would've gotten a kick out of it, but we had to keep their teacher's patience in mind!

Arlee Bird said...

It shows that the man in question had character and his acknowledgement may have worked to his advantage in the long run.