# Editing mistakes - typos and factual errors you've seen
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 4, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996 "2015-08-04T18:51:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/81 "2015-08-08T00:46:31Z")
That’s not a correction of a correction. 😕
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/82 "2015-08-08T00:47:14Z")
It’s a correction in need of a correction.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/83 "2015-08-08T00:48:49Z")
:smack:
Although the error was not in the actual reported correction.
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### Author:  [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/84 "2015-08-08T02:44:44Z")
I have seen “Mrs. So-and-so and the late Mr. So-and-so announce the marriage of their daughter…” more than once in local newspapers. I never could figure out how dead guys announce anything.
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### Author:  [@funky\_little\_lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/funky_little_lee)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/85 "2015-08-08T03:56:55Z")
A story in our local paper about a man killed in an accident read:
“The dead man was last seen driving his pickup South on Route 222.”
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### Author:  [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/86 "2015-08-08T04:54:51Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> Dewey Lambdin, in his “Alan Lewrie” series of Napoleonic naval adventures, insists that “forty” is spelled “fourty.” He does this with absolute consistency.
>
> This, too, might not be “wrong,” but it’s damned unorthodox!
This is, for sure, one for the “English spelling is insane” department. We spell “fourteen” with the “u” as in “four”, after all… it would seem logical to do the same with “forty”: but to put it no more strongly, logic is not what this stuff is all about.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/87 "2015-08-08T12:32:13Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#):
>
> I saw a reference to “dawizard” in a 2nd edition D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, which makes me think somebody did a global search & replace from “mage” to “wizard” and didn’t clean up afterwards.
Reminiscent of the “cdesign proponentsists” mistake [Of Pandas and People - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22)
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### Author:  [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/88 "2015-08-08T15:14:11Z")
I have also read quite a few articles about some “former native” who did well.
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### Author:  [@BobArrgh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobArrgh)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/89 "2015-08-08T16:51:55Z")
I may have mentioned this here before in another thread, and apologize if I have done so.
I love reading military-based escapist novels, and one of my favorite authors [del]is[/del] was W. E. B. Griffin. His stuff was always full of typos, but I figured it was just that proofreading was a dying profession. Now that his son is listed as a co-author, the quality of the material itself has started to drop.
One of the absolutely worst examples I have seen recently was in his latest series about a character named “Charlie Castillo”. This guy is a “Texican”, and his family was in Texas before the Texas Revolution in 1836. I believe one of his forebears is reputed to have helped defend the Alamo from Santa Anna. Needless to say, Charlie Castillo is extremely proud of his Texan heritage.
In one of the latest novels, Castillo is describing the Battle at the Alamo (which took place in 1836), and mentions Daniel Boone as one of the defenders.
That is simply not a mistake anyone who purports to be from Texas (such as Charlie Castillo) would make. The person he meant to mention is Davy Crockett.
(For those of you not up on American History, Daniel Boone was a frontiersman and explorer who died in 1820. Davy Crockett was also a frontiersman, but from a later time period. The confusion probably comes from the fact that both of these men were popularized on TV in the 1950s, and the characters were both played by Fess Parker.)
This one has bugged me so badly, that I have pretty much given up reading Griffin’s/Butterworth’s work anymore.
Seriously, dudes … there are these things on the Internet called “Google” and “Bing”. You might try entering those names into your search-engine-of-choice and then use them to find real answers. I am almost positive you can find a list of the Alamo’s defenders using such a tool.
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### Author:  [@journeyman\_southpaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/journeyman_southpaw)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2015, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/90 "2015-08-08T18:14:41Z")
Another one from the Canadian debate the other day;
[From the Toronto Star](http://www.thestar.com/news/federal-election/2015/08/07/fact-checking-7-claims-in-the-leaders-debate.html): “Trudeau attacked Mulcair for supporting a simple majority for Quebec **secession** …”
[Exact same story from a different site](http://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/5787805-fact-checking-7-claims-in-the-leaders-debate/): “Trudeau attacked Mulcair for supporting a simple majority for Quebec **succession** …”
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### Author:  [@Mr.Goob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Goob)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2015, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/91 "2015-08-09T03:04:03Z")
Some Steven King story or another had a little kid being abducted. (Yeah, go fish on which one, I don’t remember.) There was something wrong in the continuity of the bicycle being on the kickstand-lying down-kickstand-lying down.
A tech manual I read when talking about a piece of equipment. Picture a big circle and 4 little ones inside. One top, a bottom, left and right. The left one was referred to as being at the three quarter o’clock position.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [August 9, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/92 "2015-08-09T21:30:29Z")
> [@SpoilerVirgin](#):
>
> You have to watch out for that wicked furniture!
Same sort of mistake: Back in the '70s there was an article about someone’s fancy house, which had a stone fireplace with a wooded mantelpiece.
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### Author:  [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/93 "2015-08-11T13:51:52Z")
I once saw a regular syndicated comic strip in which, in one of the panels, the word balloons were pointing at the wrong people. Wish I would have saved it.
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### Author:  [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/94 "2015-08-11T13:55:02Z")
I recall one of the later Harry Potter (5 or 6?) books having a doozy of a typo about Snape somewhere. The name was completely mangled. My copy was a first print, though, so it may have been fixed.
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### Author:  [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2015, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/95 "2015-08-11T18:08:00Z")
According to the H2 channel just now, “nebula” comes from the Greek word for “cloud.”
It ain’t Greek, it’s Latin! :smack:
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/96 "2015-08-11T19:15:30Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#):
>
> I once saw a regular syndicated comic strip in which, in one of the panels, the word balloons were pointing at the wrong people. Wish I would have saved it.
Happened at least once in the Modesty Blaise comic strip (I’ve been buying the collections.)
And, of course, the famous [The Far Side/Dennis the Menace swap](http://twentytwowords.com/newspaper-accidentally-swaps-captions-for-the-far-side-and-dennis-the-menace-twice/), where each strip was printed with the other strip’s caption.
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### Author:  [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)
#### Post date: [August 11, 2015, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/97 "2015-08-11T19:30:04Z")
> [@Trinopus](#):
>
> And, of course, the famous [The Far Side/Dennis the Menace swap](http://twentytwowords.com/newspaper-accidentally-swaps-captions-for-the-far-side-and-dennis-the-menace-twice/), where each strip was printed with the other strip’s caption.
Wait…that happened TWICE? I remember the “petrified skull” one.
And doesn’t the artwork on both of those 1981 strips look weirdly sparse? Dennis and Joey appear to be floating in empty space, while the Far Side strip just completely wastes half a panel.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2015, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/98 "2015-08-22T02:35:23Z")
Here’s one from Wednesday that I mentioned in my Bombs Blast Bangkok thread. The _San Jose Mercury News_ in California seems geographically challenged with this headline: [Taiwan Hunts for Shrine Bomber](http://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-jose-mercury-news/20150819/281672548683718/TextView)
(Thailand and Taiwan are frequently confused with each other.)
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### Author:  [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2015, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/99 "2015-08-22T05:01:27Z")
> [@Battle\_Pope](#):
>
> I was watching a documentary on the [A-26 Invader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-26_Invader) and the narrator stated that the dorsal turret, rather than having two \*.50 calibre \* (.5 inch or 12.7mm) guns was actually equipped with a pair of “50mm machine guns”.
That is fairly common. I’ve seen reference to .22mm ammunition and 45mm pistols as well. :eek:
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### Author:  [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/editing-mistakes-typos-and-factual-errors-youve-seen/726996/100 "2015-08-25T02:02:11Z")
The union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or the Wobblies, is often rendered as the International Workers of the World in popular and academic histories. No doubt because many unions are the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but still.
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