Being chic has nothing to do with sheiks
We hate errors – any errors. Stupid errors are among the worst. We really hate mistakes about things we know, yet we still just get wrong. But the absolute worst are errors we’ve caught that still manage to make it into the paper.
We have one of those in today’s paper, on page 1B, the new BE section. It contains an article that enumerates seven beauty tips that might surprise you. What might surprise you most is No. 6, where we offer you a way to look “sheik” on the cheap.
The biggest surprise might be that the sheik look comes with neither your own oil well, luxury car nor harem because what we really wanted was for you to look chic – a word that sounds the same, but has a completely different meaning.
The author of the story knows the difference – we won’t even make any jokes about her being a Texas A&M graduate – she just made a mistake. It’s a little trick those of us who routinely compose at the typewriter encounter: Sometimes your brain just tells your fingers to type a word that sounds the same because you are writing so fast you don’t stop to think about each word.
But we caught the mistake. Seriously. Days ago.
Because of the section redesign that launched Tuesday, those pages were created farther in advance than usual, so the error was caught and corrected. Then yesterday, the editor responsible for the redesign even followed up, going to extreme measures to make sure the corrected version of the story made it into print.
It didn’t. We’re still not sure why.
We just know it doesn’t make us feel very chic.
We have one of those in today’s paper, on page 1B, the new BE section. It contains an article that enumerates seven beauty tips that might surprise you. What might surprise you most is No. 6, where we offer you a way to look “sheik” on the cheap.
The biggest surprise might be that the sheik look comes with neither your own oil well, luxury car nor harem because what we really wanted was for you to look chic – a word that sounds the same, but has a completely different meaning.
The author of the story knows the difference – we won’t even make any jokes about her being a Texas A&M graduate – she just made a mistake. It’s a little trick those of us who routinely compose at the typewriter encounter: Sometimes your brain just tells your fingers to type a word that sounds the same because you are writing so fast you don’t stop to think about each word.
But we caught the mistake. Seriously. Days ago.
Because of the section redesign that launched Tuesday, those pages were created farther in advance than usual, so the error was caught and corrected. Then yesterday, the editor responsible for the redesign even followed up, going to extreme measures to make sure the corrected version of the story made it into print.
It didn’t. We’re still not sure why.
We just know it doesn’t make us feel very chic.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 10:10 AM
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