Sub-editing errors

Mistakes, Mistakes….

A sub-editor’s life is all about getting it right 99 times and getting yelled for the one time she (he) didn’t get it right. The whole problem I feel is lack of time. I remember copy-pasting one entire chunk only to see the next day morning that the small pointer, which was supposed to read

See also Page 2, Gates on N-deal, instead read (horror of horrors), Bill Gates on N-deal. Of course, my team mates did’nt let me forget this goof-up for a long time…sundry jokes on how Microsoft inked the N-deal abounded.

The other errors that made life more bearable for us, was when a reporter filed a copy on the death of an elephant.

It read:

By OUR CORRESPONDENT

Chennai, April 1: An elephant died of a heart attack near Dindigul on Sunday morning at a temple. (And next comes the beauty of beauties) She was female.….

And then there was my colleague, who missed this line in a story on our P.C. (finance minister not our terminal, though the rate at which they function is the same: Dead slow!): “the minister said discreet factors were involved in any budget, and it could not be dismissed as a poll-driven one,” instead of “discrete factors were involved..” Of course most of what our politicians say is dubious, but the correspondent’s typwriting error and the sub’s casualness resulted in a heap of coals on all our heads from the heads.

And some mistakes are so easy to make…like phonetic errors….”well-nown carnatic singer..” “non other than …”