Maybe now you can get the girls basketball scores off of the sports page. Almost a month since they happened.

Dan Quail proof reading?

My mother was a proofreader for the Gazette back in the '70s, long before spell checkers were invented. She was well suited for the job - a champion speller as a child with an ability to spot grammatical errors that others missed. She loved that job. She wound up in a nursing home with Alzheimer's disease, but even when the disease was quite advanced and she could no longer recognize family members, she still could spell even the most difficult words you would give her.

More newspaper jargon like subhed:
http://journalism.about.com/od/insidethe...

The Gazette has typos, to be sure, but for a long long time it had a persistent problem with homophones, particulary in headlines. There/their/they're confusion, for example. The one I remember was a story some 20 years ago about a dictator's "rain of terror" ....

I blame Mitch Bliss. Well, not really, because he let my UW-Rock journalism class actually compose a page of the Gazette once. (The headlines were already committed to metal.) This is the old printing job called "stripping", and as a result I can always say I was a stripper for a day! But once these guys got a story and a hed, they were mainly looking at making everything fit, and they weren't gonna step on the copyeditor's toes. For our part, the pros had already put in the ads, which we were NOT ALLOWED to touch, and they did some final tweaking before it went to the press.

Anyway, my point is that there are specific parts of the process where typos can be found and corrected, and after a certain point it's next to impossible. I assume the digital compositing of today is what made fixing the "contact/contract" error possible. Back in the day, though, stopping the press would be too expensive and time-consuming just to correct a typo.

Don't worry Scott, the Evansville Review has typos from the front page to the last page.

I took a proofreading class a few years ago and decided to proofread the Review for extra credit. I proofed articles and ads. Lets just say, the instructor told me I had more than filled my quota for extra credit and I couldn't turn in any more.

While I find the occassional error in the Gazette, I have a very difficult time reading the Review due to the errors. I even sent the Editor a letter asking if they proofed or if they wanted to hire me to do it for them. I didn't get a response.

There is a difference between human error, which is what happens with the Gazette, and just plain laziness and unprofessionalism as in the Review.

The effects affect their lives.

It's not like I depend on the Gazette for my news anyway. I get my news from The Daily Show and The Onion.

snerd is right. Effects is correct.
OR... The subhed could have read -As a new early retirement and buyout program looms, former GM workers reflect on how the previous offer's effects affects their lives.

tammyk1017: The correct word is "effects." "Affects" is a verb, "effects" is a noun, and this phrase calls for a noun as one of the objects of the verb "reflect". A verb cannot be the object of a verb. To use "affect" correctly in the subhead one would say "former GM workers reflect on [the] previous offer and how it affected/affects their lives."

Whydoyouask...in your comment below about the Gazette's subhed on the front page....I assume that you're talking about the article about the GM buyout package. In that case, the Gazette DID NOT make a mistake. "affects" is the correct word, not "effects". The subhed was "As a new early retirement and buyout program looms, former GM workers reflect on previous offer and its affects on their lives". The definition of "affect" is "TO ACT ON; PRODUCE AN EFFECT OR CHANGE IN". The definition of "effect" is "SOMETHING THAT IS PRODUCED BY A CAUSE". In the subhed, the word "affects" was used in the sense that the previous offer produced an effect or change in the lives of the people who accepted those offers". So the Gazette used the correct word in this case.

And today no one knows what we are talking about.

I don't know what you are talking about. ;-)

Wow-that was made to order for you, garyprimer. That one made me laugh out loud.

Thank goodness they got the headline right today.

The CONTACT/CONTRACT error wasn't as bad as the display ad of a few years ago that should have read "SHIRT SALE." Why is it always the R's that get dopped?

whydoyouask: no wonder you "newspeakers" can't spell. Did the Headbergs ever own the Gazette?

you wanna see errors? the chicago tribune is the place to go.

A long long time ago a vet group news letter gave this report:

We buried three of our comrades last month
thanks to our firing squad.

To make mistakes is human. To ridicule someone for simple mistakes is also human. To agrandise oneself at someone's expense is human, too. There are a lot of humans posting comments on GazetteXtra.com.

Thanks for the headline error Gazette! I just sold my first one for sixty bucks on Ebay. Folks actually purchase errors there.

By the way, hockeyjockey, in "newspaper speak" headlines often are referred to as "heds," and leads are referred to as "ledes." Why this is, I have no clue.

Nice try, though.

By the way, whydoyouask, it's "subhead" not "subhed."

You shouldn't get much criticism for a typo in this forum. The anatomical blind spot runs rampant.

funny thing. on some of the gazette pages the "view FRONT PAGE" has the incorrect copy and on others it has the corrected version...Mr. Angus, you may want to double check the website, as well. :)

Mistakes happen. oh well. I'm over it.

There was an email I got once that had a bunch of jumbled words, except for the first and last letter of each word. It was to show that we tend to see the beginning and end of a word and allow our minds to fill in the rest. Easy enough mistake. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to remember they are not completely perfect either.

Ha!

People in glass houses...

...should wear sunglasses.

the word is "especially"...

It has been said before but will say it again, since the new presses and new format etc.(expecially our weekend delivery service!!!) this paper has gone down hill. not worth it any more.

I would be so happy if I only made two mistakes last week.
Maybe we should be talking about "casting the first stone"

Second headline gaff in a week ... you might want to go back to the Sunday 3/30 edition and check the subhed of the story that ran just below the flag. I can't remember what story it was off the top of my head, but the subhed contained the phrase "its affects" instead of "its effects."