Thursday, April 1, 2010

Memorable Gaffe: In Gossip Blogger Story, NYT's Alex Williams Actually Misspells The Word "Misspelled."


Today's Styles section cover story by Alex Williams about gossip bloggers includes a section of mini-profiles, in which Williams notes each blogger's most egregious blunder in a section called "Memorable Gaffe."

Well, here's a "Memorable Gaffe" for Williams. In his entry on Gawker night/weekend editor Maureen O'Connor, he writes this:

MEMORABLE GAFFE: Took Fox News to task over a typo in a chyron (a term for the graphics at the bottom of a TV screen) identifying former the Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth as a “congresswoman.” Too bad Ms. O’Connor mispelled the word chyron in the post.

Uh, fellas? Misspelled has two s's!

The above is a screen grab from the NYT website taken this morning around 8:00 a.m.

The misspelling of misspelled as "mispelled" has since been corrected on the web version, but misspelled remains misspelled as "mispelled" in the print edition.

This sort of embarrassing mistake -- especially in the context of scolding another journalist for their misspelling -- doesn't do much to allay reader fears that recent budget cuts have reduced the quality of NYT copy editing.

UPDATE: The NYT has appended a correction to the gossip bloggers story this afternoon, addressing its misspelling of misspelling as "mispelling." Here is the correction, in full:

An earlier version of this article contained its own Memorable Gaffe in discussing Maureen O'Connor's error on the term chyron. In noting that Ms. O'Connor misspelled chyron, the article said "mispelled." What's the old saying? People who (literally) live in glass houses . . .

11 comments:

Roberto said...

Epic.

Frolic said...

Awesome.

That's rule number one of being a jerk in print. Never criticize someone else's grammar or spelling. It always bites you in the ass.

Frolic said...

Looks like the Times quietly corrected this. Did you get a screen grab? Did it run that way in print?

Anonymous said...

The NYT has publicly corrected it now.

Stan said...

Misspelling misspell (or its inflected forms) while criticising a misspelling is a most concise manifestation of Muphry's Law.

Anonymous said...

Stan -- Very clever of you to misspell criticize and Murphy. I always wonder why most of my comments I submit to blogs don't get posted. I think it's because I have NO imagination and my comments are never clever. Well done!

Anonymous said...

Shouldn't it also be "the former Arizona Congressman," or am I missing something?

Anonymous said...

the person before me is right. the times corrected its misspelling. but overlooked its inverted word order (ie., former the congressman vs. the former congressman), and that's the bigger problem.

to make matters worse, the definite article wasn't even necessary. the reporter or copy editor could've simply said "former arizona congressman jd hayworth" (forcing him to also drop the indefinite article before "congresswoman").

"MEMORABLE GAFFE: Took Fox News to task over a typo in a chyron (a term for the graphics at the bottom of a TV screen) identifying former the Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth as a “congresswoman.” Too bad Ms. O’Connor misspelled the word chyron in the post."

Stan said...

Very clever of you to misspell criticize and Murphy

Anonymous: I misspelled neither word. Criticise is a standard variant form of criticize, and Muphry's Law is not the same as Murphy's Law.

Anonymous said...

Spot the grammatical error:

"...especially in the context of scolding another journalist for their misspelling..."

Zoiks!

Anonymous said...

And to make matters worse, "Chyron" is a trademark. It is a Long Island-based company that makes the hardware and software used by broadcasters to superimpose titles, credits or other information on a television screen. There are other ways to describe a "chyron" for those not in the media or television businesses.