NY Times correction of the day

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@robardin

It’s the sequel to his original work, “The Surrender Monkey”. The full and correct title is, “Surrender Monkey II: The Tribute”.

A recent story referred to Nicolas Sarkozy as a “Surrender Monkey.” He is, in fact, the President of France. The New Yorker regrets the error.

[Marley23]

@ftg

The Oregonian has to “clarify things” about how one of their editors died. He didn’t die in a car outside an apartment, but inside, during a “visit” to a young lady friend he had a peculiar relationship with.

Translation: Bob Caldwell may be the last person to leave the newspaper business happy.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@Marley23

Translation: Bob Caldwell may be the last person to leave the newspaper business happy.

Good on The Oregonian for being willing to run that story, given his gig with the paper.

[Noelq]

@NinjaChick

The correction was made without comment, if I recall correctly, but years ago Reuters once released a brief piece about a meat recall due to contamination. The only problem was that the editorial staff was apparently snoozing on the job, so the lede about a significant recall of beef patties turned into “…recall 94,400 pounds of frozen ground beef panties…”.

Which still makes me giggle, and I’d have loved to see an actual correction clarifying that your frozen meat underpants are probably perfectly safe for human consumption.

That one is printed out, framed, hanging on my wall. Its a subtle proofreading exam that I give to passing strangers.

[Malacandra]

@Hari_Seldon

The New Yorker does, very occasionally, use these corrections as column fillers. March 12 has one, page 81. They used to do it regularly and I always enjoyed them. My favorite was someone wrote to Dear Abbey complaining that some TV host always signed off “For xxxx and me” (I don’t recall who xxxx was). Abbey went on a riff how grammar was becoming less prescriptive and the person should cool out on the error. The New Yorker printed the exchange without comment, IIRC.

I’ll bite. What was the supposed grammar error?

[Greg_Charles]

@Eve

I have two collection books of them, from 191 and '32.

I don’t know what you mean by 191 and '32. Do you mean 1931 and 1932? If so, where did you get them? I get e-mail ads from the New Yorker store approximately every 30 seconds and I’ve never seen them offer that.

@Malacandra

I’ll bite. What was the supposed grammar error?

“… for xxxxxx and me” is proper grammar, assuming a it’s a fragment of something like, “Here’s a little something for xxxxx and me.” It’s not uncommon for people to hypercorrect that to, “for xxxxx and I”, which is not only wrong, it’s f*#$@-ing annoyingly wrong. I’d much rather hear someone say, “Eve and me went to the moon last night,” than, “Between you and I, I wish it were I saying, ‘Eve and me went to the moon last night.’”

[Eve]

@Greg_Charles

I don’t know what you mean by 191 and '32. Do you mean 1931 and 1932? If so, where did you get them? I get e-mail ads from the New Yorker store approximately every 30 seconds and I’ve never seen them offer that.

Yes, 1931 and '32. They printed one in the year 131, but it is on papyrus and crumbles easily.

Got 'em through bookfinder.com. They only seem to have collected those two years, then stopped.