Monday, July 14, 2008

That is so ... nevermind

This sounds too good to be true. A Christian news site's policy to change the word "gay" to "homosexual" led to an error of Olympic proportion when track star Tyson Gay became "Tyson Homosexual." Think he's heard that one before? Read this story by Washington Post blogger Mary Ann Akers and you too may laugh like a 12-year-old.

Reminds me of a story I heard from a prof at North Carolina. He told of an editor who routinely searched every article for the word "pubic" and replaced it with "public" to avoid embarrassing spelling mistakes. One story involved a police investigation. The published story included a reference to a "public" hair found at the scene.

Both of these stories should serve as reminders that editors must actually READ the articles they profess to edit. And that some rules are made to be broken.