Typo negative: the best and worst of Grauniad mistakes over 200 years
May 11, 2021 11:44 PM Subscribe
In the Guardian / Grauniad: "Readers were informed that the 2003 spring season at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon would feature “The Taming of the Screw”. Anyone spluttering over their morning muesli at this point might have reached for Glaxo’s “controversial treatment for irritable bowl syndrome”, as we once had it." Recently on MetaTalk, wikitionary entry and urban dictionary entry, a typo from last year, and a 2009 Grauniad/Guardian article from their style editor.
The paradox of running a Corrections & Clarifications column like the Guardian's is that it quickly becomes an excellent way to ensure your most mortifying typographical errors are never noticed.
By filling it day after day with utterly inconsequential errors containing no humorous potential whatsoever, you quickly teach readers to skip the column as being of no possible interest. On the odd occasions when you have a more embarrassing typo to confess, that can be safely buried in the column along with everything else, safe in the knowledge that almost no-one will read it. Genius!
posted by Paul Slade at 12:33 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
By filling it day after day with utterly inconsequential errors containing no humorous potential whatsoever, you quickly teach readers to skip the column as being of no possible interest. On the odd occasions when you have a more embarrassing typo to confess, that can be safely buried in the column along with everything else, safe in the knowledge that almost no-one will read it. Genius!
posted by Paul Slade at 12:33 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
Thanks for posting this, Doorshrew!
posted by oulipian at 1:14 AM on May 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 1:14 AM on May 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
yeah but Who Orders the Rod Whores for their Sword Hero?
posted by lalochezia at 1:54 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 1:54 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
Who? Dr. Rose!
[Dear old self-deprecating Grauniad, happy 200th (again)!]
posted by chavenet at 4:21 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
[Dear old self-deprecating Grauniad, happy 200th (again)!]
posted by chavenet at 4:21 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
I like the last line: "The absence of corrections yesterday was due to a technical hitch rather than any sudden onset of accuracy."
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 5:23 AM on May 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 5:23 AM on May 12, 2021 [17 favorites]
Wonder if anyone considered doing a mash-up of The Taming of the Shrew and The Turn of the Screw, just because.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:30 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:30 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
This, from 2018, is still one of my favourite Guardian corrections:
A review of Peggy Seeger’s memoir quotes her description of her early impressions of Ewan MacColl and how they fell in love, saying he had a “hairy, fat, naked belly poking out, and was clad in ill-fitting trousers, suspenders, no shirt, a ragged jacket and a filthy lid of stovepipe hat aslant like a garbage can”. The context we omitted was that MacColl was appearing in a production of The Threepenny Opera.posted by verstegan at 5:45 AM on May 12, 2021 [32 favorites]
I know The Taming Of The Screw as a Dave Barry book, but it’s a funny phrase any time.
“The 200 Moments that made the Guardian” magazine that came with the newspaper on Saturday is something that will live on my bookshelf forever - do try and grab a copy from your local newsagent before they send any copies back. (Image: https://twitter.com/theandrewstocks/status/1390763862186733568?s=20)
posted by bookbook at 5:46 AM on May 12, 2021
“The 200 Moments that made the Guardian” magazine that came with the newspaper on Saturday is something that will live on my bookshelf forever - do try and grab a copy from your local newsagent before they send any copies back. (Image: https://twitter.com/theandrewstocks/status/1390763862186733568?s=20)
posted by bookbook at 5:46 AM on May 12, 2021
Oh, a snippet from number 35, Edward Snowden:
“The last time I saw Snowden was two years ago… and met a mutual friend in a restaurant. I told them that the Guardian would pay but at the end of the evening the restaurant would not accept a credit card, only roubles. I did note have enough and Snowden paid. The Guardian now owes Snowden not only for one of the biggest scoops in its history, but for dinner for three.”
posted by bookbook at 5:51 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
“The last time I saw Snowden was two years ago… and met a mutual friend in a restaurant. I told them that the Guardian would pay but at the end of the evening the restaurant would not accept a credit card, only roubles. I did note have enough and Snowden paid. The Guardian now owes Snowden not only for one of the biggest scoops in its history, but for dinner for three.”
posted by bookbook at 5:51 AM on May 12, 2021 [4 favorites]
bookbook: "“The 200 Moments that made the Guardian”"
Available online
As is The rudest things they ever said about the Guardian
posted by chavenet at 6:12 AM on May 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
Available online
As is The rudest things they ever said about the Guardian
posted by chavenet at 6:12 AM on May 12, 2021 [2 favorites]
A reader noted that our recipe called ‘Spaghetti with radicchio, fennel and rosemary’ didn’t include spaghetti, fennel or rosemary.”
To be fair, this is how most internet cooking blog commenters end up making recipes.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:13 AM on May 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
To be fair, this is how most internet cooking blog commenters end up making recipes.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:13 AM on May 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
re, "The rudest things they ever said about the Guardian": Finally we get to the bottom of Elon Musk's obsession with space travel! The Tesla billionaire Elon Musk emailed a reporter in 2018 to tell them that the Guardian “is the most insufferable newspaper on planet Earth”
Apparently he just wants to escape the Guardian's earthbound insufferableness.
posted by taz at 7:03 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Apparently he just wants to escape the Guardian's earthbound insufferableness.
posted by taz at 7:03 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wrodshore, you've been missed!
posted by theora55 at 7:16 AM on May 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 7:16 AM on May 12, 2021 [15 favorites]
The problem is that the truly funny stuff in the Guardian isn't the typos. It's where they juggle the left leaning political position of the newspaper with the bougie lifestyle section full of land rover and travel ads resulting in articles like "How you can have an inground pool at your summer place, own 3 SUVs and travel 4 months of the year and still be an environmentalist". It was that constant tension that I subscribed for back when I lived on that island.
posted by srboisvert at 7:43 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 7:43 AM on May 12, 2021 [3 favorites]
I was always told that the Grauniad's typos were largely an effect of the paper being based out of Manchester: the London edition would go out painfully early, before all the sub-editing could be finished. As a result, locals got a much improved copy compared to the southeast.
And we ignore at our peril that the twitter handle for their American operations is indeed @GuardiAnus
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:07 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
And we ignore at our peril that the twitter handle for their American operations is indeed @GuardiAnus
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:07 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
My favourite newspaper correction of all, which is attributed to a US paper called the Schuyler Vindicator, read: "Instead of being arrested, as we stated, for kicking his wife downstairs and hurling a lighted kerosene lamp after her, the Reverend James P. Wellman died unmarried four years ago."
Much as I love this one, I've always worried that it might be apocryphal. I've just done a bit of digging, though, and I think I may have found the individual involved. The dates and locations all fit together quite neatly.
The correction was first reported in 1885 as part of a syndicated column which many newspapers carried. Findagrave reveals a man called James P. Wellman who died in January 1879, and was buried in New York state, which has a town called Schuyler. We know he'd died "four years ago" when the correction appeared, so that gives a publication date of 1881. My guess is that the 1885 column's author had hung on to the clipping ever since, and was delighted when his chance came round to reproduce it in print at last.
[Unfortunately, neither the original correction nor the story that made it necessary seem to have survived.]
posted by Paul Slade at 8:35 AM on May 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Much as I love this one, I've always worried that it might be apocryphal. I've just done a bit of digging, though, and I think I may have found the individual involved. The dates and locations all fit together quite neatly.
The correction was first reported in 1885 as part of a syndicated column which many newspapers carried. Findagrave reveals a man called James P. Wellman who died in January 1879, and was buried in New York state, which has a town called Schuyler. We know he'd died "four years ago" when the correction appeared, so that gives a publication date of 1881. My guess is that the 1885 column's author had hung on to the clipping ever since, and was delighted when his chance came round to reproduce it in print at last.
[Unfortunately, neither the original correction nor the story that made it necessary seem to have survived.]
posted by Paul Slade at 8:35 AM on May 12, 2021 [6 favorites]
Seems to me the tone of the article is really pretty typo positive.
posted by nickmark at 9:14 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by nickmark at 9:14 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
"Grauniad" is one of those nicknames which has transcended its origins, sort of like "The Grey Lady" for the New York Times, a similarly derogatory joke about the conservatism of the New York Times.
posted by Merus at 9:26 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Merus at 9:26 AM on May 12, 2021 [1 favorite]
Jatkuu Seuraavalla Sivulla
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 10:57 AM on May 12, 2021 [5 favorites]
At least the professor was approximately identified. Fast forward a few decades and the Guardian carried an article from Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, giving a byline to Jatkuu Seuraavalla Sivulla, which a reader advised was not the author’s name but the Finnish for “continued on the next page”.
Sauniad.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:19 AM on May 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
Sauniad.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:19 AM on May 12, 2021 [8 favorites]
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