Typo Will Cost Michigan County $40K

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-elect/2006/oct/10/101000165.html

Typo Will Cost Michigan County $40K GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (AP) - Ottawa County will pay about $40,000 to correct an embarrassing typo on its Nov. 7 election ballot: The "L" was left out of "public."

A total of 170,000 ballots will have to be reprinted.

The mistake appeared in the text of a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban some types of affirmative action.

The word "public" was misspelled one of the six times it appears, county Clerk Daniel C. Krueger said Tuesday. Five or six people in his office had proofread the ballot, but it was an election clerk who found the mistake early last week.

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[silverweb]

1. Why?

That's hardly a critical word on the ballot, like a candidate's name or party. Any semi-literate person would recognize it as a typo, especially if it was spelled correctly in all other instances.

So why are they going to waste all that money reprinting the whole business? That's just stupid!

:shrug:

[Geoff R. Casavant]

2. Quite simple

Spend $40K to correct it now, or spend $100K paying all the extra operators to handle the phone calls from the RW nutjobs who get their undies in a twist because they saw the word "pubic." :-)

[silverweb]

6. LOL

I think you have the best point in favor. The money, therefore, ought to come out of all the fundie tithes.

:D

[Poll_Blind]

3. Yeah, this really does smell of bullshit. Will this jeopardize ballot...

...availability? Seems really suspicious.

PB

[donco6]

4. Pubic.

No one wants to be the laughing stock.

[Journeyman]

7. Agreed. What with the internet, and the ability to provide a good copy...

at all polling places (for the benefit of the neurotic who must read it in pristine form), why waste so much money on such a minor issue.


And on the subject of typos, I'll share that when I was in college I set type for a newspaper. My favorite typo occurred in a human interest story about an elderly woman in town. The line was supposed to read she collected antique clocks.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

9. Nope, I've got one better.

From an old Dave Barry "Mr. Language Person" column, the text was from a car magazine, discussing something to the effect of the thrill and exhilaration of a well-timed shift. They left out an "f."

Wait. Your post says you set the type. Was the typo yours?

[Journeyman]

12. Yes. It was my typo. . .

Your example's pretty good, as well.

Editor & Publisher used to print the "best of the worst," kind of a "Tonight Show Headlines" for journalists. Some very funny mistakes over the years.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

14. You should read National Lampoon's Big Book of True Facts

But not while drinking milk.

Plenty of giggle-fodder there. My favorite (not a typo so much as unfortunate wording): "Man beats off bear to save his friend."

There was also a newspaper clipping of "Sesame Street On Ice" that misspelled "The Count." I'll leave that to your imagination.

[Demit]

5. Maybe next time they'll pay a professional proofreader.

Interesting that something so glaring could get by "five or six people in his office". Maybe now they'll understand why there are professionals who do this. Whatever they saved by not hiring one has just cost them $40K. Nice going, county clerk's office.

[silverweb]

8. I know a little bit about editing.

As a long-time transcriptionist and sometime editor, I know for a fact that people see what they expect to see most of the time. It's almost impossible to perfectly proofread one's own work except after a break -- and even a break is no guarantee, because the eye sees what the brain meant when the individual was typing.

Most literate people don't read words individually, but whole phrases. A single typo could therefore easily slip by unnoticed -- not only by proofreaders in the same office, but also by most of the voters.

I learned a long time ago that the best way to proofread for typos is to read the document backwards, word by word, thereby eliminating the ability to read whole phrases. It's a very tedious method, at best, but the most accurate.

In any case, reprinting the whole ballot for something so insignificant is an absolute waste.

[Demit]

13. Then you know the reason to hire a pro, and not rely on amateurs.

Writers don't rely on themselves to proof their own work. Ad agencies don't let their copywriters proof their own work. Proofreaders are trained to do the job right. At the very least, if you're going to do the cheap thing, you have one person read aloud to another person, as the second person reads from the text. That can catches a typo.

However, "pubic" for "public" is an old stunt. In the old days, I'd heard of newspaper typesetters "accidentally" pulling the wrong type like this. I wonder if there was some mischief maker in the county clerk's office who felt like having a little fun.

[silverweb]

15. Not on full-time payroll.

An outside proofreading consultant on a per-job basis wouldn't be a bad idea, though -- as long as the consultant would have to eat any reprinting charges because of errors.

[Demit]

16. Oh for heaven's sake. Who said full-time payroll?

Are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?

[silverlib]

10. Auto Correct!

In all public institutions that I know of, everyone has "pubic" in WORD auto correct to type out as public.

TEA - Texas Education Agency, has done this for years. Nothing like a little "pubic" education.



Oil and Gas Agencies - "shit" auto corrects to "shut."

Once upon a time, a long time ago, letters went out to oil companies - "if this violation is not corrected in 30 days, we will shit in your hole."

[SoCalDem]

11. Here's a fun list of often misspelled words

http://www.barnsdle.demon.co.uk/spell/error.html