While taking a few minutes this morning to browse through the Cornell Sun for the first time in a few moons, I couldn't help but notice a quote from basketball senior Cody Toppert:
[q]"All of our players are well-rounded in all fascists of the game," Toppert said. "We all know everyone on the court can make plays, and it's fun to play basketball that way."[/q]
A second look just now reveals that the error has been corrected, leading me to believe (or at least hope) that somebody simply did that as a joke online this morning. I am very curious to know what the print version of today's Sun reads. Anybody have it handy?
Ok, carry on...
Seems to me this is a case of bad reliance on spell checkers. Microsoft Word corrects "fascit" to "fascist", which is one possibility.
Relying on spell checkers can get you in trouble. Or at least make you look like an idiot sometimes.
It's spelled "fascist" in the print version as well...Oops. ::snore::
Does Prince Harry go to Cornell? ::worry::
When the mind drifts, sometimes one can think of one word and type a similar. I think it happens more with age although this wouldn't be the Sun's excuse.
Sometimes the writer just gets it plain wrong. A while back, a writer for Automotive News quoted David E. Davis, the learned editor of Automobile, excoriating the do-gooders and "Savannah Rollers" at NHTSA. The word Davis actually used was "savonarolas."
Of course, it's the copy editor's job to catch this. One night (the night Derrick Coleman punched out Josh Wexler in the Carrier Dome), a sports columnist wrote "for all intensive purposes". Fortunately, an editor checked the article on the flats so it could be corrected to "for all intents and purposes".
How dare you point out an error in a Sun article without also pointing out everything the article got right?!::rolleyes::
Beeeej
There is a lot of pressure to move a lot of manuscript in a short period of time at a newspaper. Not everyone at newspapers graduated in the top half of their classes. Not everyone is sober after coming back from lunch ("lunch" is the meal eaten or drunk halfway through shift regardless of the time of day or night). It truly is the first [rough] draft of history. Most of them are well-meaning. The pay sucks.
In earlier days I was sometimes guilty of sloppy editing, although I was also accused of seeing the glitches and letting them go through deliberately to (allegedly) embarrass the authors:
A recipe for crap dip
A performance by the high school drug and bugle corps
Sister Maria Annunciata of Chicopee Mass at the invocation of the Pope sat next to the "King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella." (this one made the New Yorker under the heading, "Rip Van Winkle Dept, Hispanioc Division")
a) the recipe wasn't that good, b) i think that's not necessarily inaccurate, and c) the author had yelled across the newsroom to me, the Ivy League know-it-all, "Ferdinand-I.isabella, King-Queen of Spain, right?" I presumed she was verifying a barroom bet, not asking the names of the *current* monarchs.
[Q]billhoward Wrote:
When the mind drifts, sometimes one can think of one word and type a similar. I think it happens more with age although this wouldn't be the Sun's excuse. [/q]
Cowbellguy's a commie? Nobody tell facetimer, it'll be all over. :-D