Some Spelling Mistakes are Bigger than Others

05/27/2012

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It’s hard to know where to start with this story from KXAS-TV. It illustrates
any number of proofreading lessons: how easy it is to miss a humdinger of an
error, how difficult said error can be to rectify once it has been spotted and
the potential cost involved. I think I’ll leave it to the original reporter,
Andrew Tanielian.

A Texas elementary school is correcting a spelling mistake made when it
changed its name nearly nine years ago.

Sunrise Elementary School in Fort Worth added "McMillan" to its name in the
2003-2004 school year -- but also added an extra "i."

The school changed its name to honour its first teacher, Mrs. Mary McMillan,
who eventually became principal. A relative recently reached out to the Fort
Worth Independent School District to say it had bought an extra vowel.

Everything had the incorrect spelling of "Sunrise-McMillian" instead of
"Sunrise-McMillan," including the lettering on the building, printed signs,
vinyl congratulatory signs, logos and Facebook.

"Oh, I was kind of shocked," said Ernie Johnson, who waters the grass on
school grounds and never knew the spelling was wrong. "I hadn't paid it any
mind."

Ever since hearing from McMillan's relative, the school has been correcting
the error. But the name is in many places people easily forget, such as business
cards, visitor's passes, certificates and digital signatures embedded in
email.

The school is taking the corrections with the right balance of seriousness
and humour. Principal Marion Mouton and his staff keep finding misspellings to
correct.

"Our day-to-day things that we just take for granted now and, as
we're coming up with it, we're seeing 'OK, that's something else we need to
fix,'" he said.

The student body as a whole hasn't been told, though some may know. Once more
misspellings are corrected, the school hopes to turn the mix-up into a teachable
moment on how to take responsibility, correct an error and move on.

When visiting her class, teacher Jouet Dotson came up with a quick brainstorm
on how to teach the new, correct spelling.

"You know how we say there's no 'i' in team?" teacher Jouet Dotson
brainstormed.

"We could say, 'Well, [at] Sunrise-McMillan, we're a team, so
there is no 'i' in the last part of McMillan.'"

The Fort Worth ISD isn't saying how much it will cost to fix all the mistakes
but did say it's exhausting all resources to try and keep costs down.
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Some Mistakes are Bigger than Others

05/17/2010

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Proofreading Course: Spell Check Must Dye Continued
The No-Nonsense Proofreading Course contains a list of examples of costly spelling errors for you to dip into whenever you find yourself confronted with the old, “I don’t need a proof reader, I’ve got spell-checking software” chestnut.

Prepare to add another to that list. And it’s a whopper.

A single typo recently cost Penguin Group Australia $20,000.

That’s right. $20,000: the cost of pulping and reprinting 7,000 copies of the bestselling Pasta Bible.

And what spelling error or grammatical gaffe could be so awful as to warrant such an expensive solution? Surely it can’t be that bad?

Brace yourself.

A recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto instructed the amateur chef to add to the otherwise wholesome and inviting ingredients “salt and freshly ground black people”.

Oh dear.

And don’t forget to tell your but-we-have-spell-checking-software nemesis that $20,000 is just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of man-hours of frantic public relations activity will have been spent in an effort to undo the offense this particularly nasty little error will undoubtedly have caused.

In true CSI fashion, let’s reconstruct this horrible, horrible crime.

Imagine you’re typing the word ‘pepper’. You’re not concentrating. Perhaps your stomach is rumbling at the thought of the spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto you’re going to rustle up when you get home. You type the first ‘p’, then the ‘e’. So far, so good.

Then disaster strikes.

Instead of tapping the ‘p’ next, you hit the ‘o’ immediately adjacent to it. It’s easily done. You don’t even notice the error and continue to type the remaining ‘e’ and ‘r’.

Now, instead of ‘pepper’, you’ve got ‘peoper’.

You run your trusty spell-checking software through the copy and it highlights your error. You scroll through the list of possible replacements and, somehow (maybe you’re really starving by now) your curser alights not on ‘pepper’ as it should but on ‘people’.

And you’ve sealed your doom.

“How do you feel about your spell-checking software now, Mr Nemesis? Hmm? Hmm?”
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