Stories Of Our Town – Much to the delight of the printer| Stories Of Our Town

We have noticed that some readers are sometimes confused by typographical errors and makeup mistakes that sometimes sneak into the best newspapers.

We believe that the News-Miner makes some of these mistakes, but not more than its fair share.

Think about how your newspaper is assembled. Every sentence must be poured into a solid slug, then placed in the correct position on the page forms.

This painstaking process is subject to error, and that’s why you find typographical errors in your newspaper.

Let’s look at typographical errors in all their forms, learn from them, and then devise methods to solve the mysteries they present to the reader.

The first and foremost type of error is an annoying type we shall call the “little fluker”. This is simply a mistaken letter that occasionally creeps into words. It is possible to find Fairbanks spelling Fairbankz, or Cigy spelling the word city. This type of error is easy to spot for the enterprising reader. You can solve it by spending a few minutes studying the word and then guessing the letter that makes the word sense. We’ll pass this one up.

The second type of error that you will find in a newspaper is much more serious. I call this type the “printers delight.” In this particular type of mistake, the linotype operator, while he is setting the copy into lead type, not only hits the wrong letter, but inserts another letter that makes a good word, but which doesn’t belong in the sentence at all.

Let me illustrate. This is a mistake our News-Miner proofreader made last week. The sentence was supposed to read: “The airline will now operate regularly scheduled runs between Fairbanks and Portland.”

But the operator inserted a T instead of a W, and here’s how the sentence read: “The airline will not operate a regularly scheduled service between Fairbanks and Portland.”

Do you see why “the printers delight” is such a deadly type of error? Although it completely changes the meaning of the sentence, the sentence still looks good. The reader can only conclude the reporter must have smoked marijuana.

Once while working for a State newspaper, I had what I considered to be a beautiful story completely ruined by one of these “printers delights”, I was so broken hearted by the mishap, that I wnt home that night and suffered a nightmare. I dreamed of being chased by two drunken pinters, who threatened to take me with a pica. I tried to call for help, but every time I shouted, the words came out as follows: Hepl, Polcie

The third type of error we shall call the “transposition.” This form of error rarely puzzles a good reader. In such an error, all the letters of the word are present, but they aren’t in the right order. Most likely, you made this mistake on your typewriter.

For example, Misssippi might be the Mississippi. All the eyes and esses are there, but they are all scrambled. Most frequently encountered is the word “the” spelled hte. Or the word “with spelled wiht. This shouldn’t hold up a single reader, so we won’t delve deeply into the matter.

It is not important to mention the fourth type of error. I call it the “printers practice swing.” Occasionally you will find a line in a story reading something like this: ETAOIN Shrdlu zzzzz bmw xxxxy

This mistake occurs when the operator of linotypes is about to start work. He feels the urge, while at the same time, to try his machine and clear all keys. As a warmup, he first hits all letters in wild order. The line is cast, of course, and occasionally it isn’t thrown out. The reader squints at the complete alphabetical confusion. These lines are not important.

The fifth type of error we shall call the “suspense ending”.

This error occurs when a few lines of a story are omitted as the printer inserts them into the form. The reader suddenly comes to a halt in the middle of a sentence and is forced to stop reading the story. It might go something like this: President Turman said that he would move immediately to block the ….then it just ends there.

Furthermore, it isn’t bad enough that the lines are missing but they invariably turn up somewhere else where they don’t belong.

This generally gives you a result something like this: The two automobiles collided just and Turman said that he would never alongside a street car, where police denied that Acheson ever said he then the ambulance arrived there…etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that you can skip to the next page and get interested in a different story when you come across such a hodgepodge.

The sixth, and last type of error I call the “sciatic scramble”. In this type of error, all the sentences of the paragraph are there, but they aren’t in the right order. This is a common type of mistake that occurs when the makeup guy drops a story and then tries to assemble it again.

You might come across this paragraph, for example:

“Five men were killed and 15 were injured when a bus plunged into the vehicle survived when the driver lost none of those aboard the ill-fated slippery pavement into the clutches of the river. “

Swift river’s frigid waters are more than enough to keep the dark waters at bay. Rescuers stated that control and the bus crashed into each other at night and disappeared in an instant.

This problem shouldn’t puzzle a clever reader. You can read each line slowly and then go through the paragraph until the sentence continues. You’ll have to skip around a bit, but you should get the idea, before long. After all, a newspaper only costs a dime, and you can’t expect your news on a platter for ten cents.

All typographical errors aside, we want to say that we truly regret any mistake you make in our paper, or any paper for the matter. We are constantly looking for them, and we are certain you won’t find any in the future.

We are working hard to ensure that the News-Miner is error-free. If you decide to run them in the future, we will be able to control.

The mistake was totally beyond repair

(Note: Linotype operator: Have you ever had more joy in your life?

Linotype operator’s note: (All the boneheads at the News-Miner aren’t in the printing department).

Note: All of the editorials in the News-Miner were typed exactly as they appeared. Editor Ryan deserves our sympathy. He was likely to receive a lot petty calls about typographical errors on daily basis. Despite all the modern technology we have, there are still many errors in digital and printed news. Perhaps because we are still all human.