ChattyCathy wrote on Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:02:18 +0200:

>> On 4/18/2010 6:42 AM, Melba's Jammin' wrote:
>>>
>>> Proofreading should always be done by two people, one
>>> reading aloud, the other checking the words. That
>>> apoostrophe s my story and capital I apostrophe m sticking
>>> to it.
>>>
>> Okay, next time I have to proofread a technical manual I will
>> call you and you can read it aloud while I check the words. I
>> am always careful about the wording because my industrial
>> clients would go ballistic if I misspelled anything or
>> inadvertently put a racist statement in the manual.
>>
> IMHO, it was obviously just a mistake, because three things happened:
> somebody made a typo, then the wrong choice was made when the
> spell check popped up the dialog box with suggestions - and
> thirdly, the proofreader(s) missed it. No matter who or what
> is ultimately to blame for it, is irrelevant; no human being
> in their right mind would do something like that intentionally
> - and attempting to sue the spell check software writers would
> be rather silly, wouldn't it?

> Besides, none of the above are uncommon mistakes so why it has
> been interpreted as a 'racist statement' (and published on
> more than one news website) just goes to show (again IMHO),
> that people have become way oversensitive to these 'silly
> mistakes' - and it must have been a slow news day too.

Sometimes I wonder about nitpickers like the people who read library
books slowly and carefully and correct in non-erasable ball-point things
they see as mistakes. They're not always correct and, are in fact, about
30% of the time are just plain ignorant. There will be proof-reading
mistakes in books and unless there are more than a few, I probably would
not complain. As I said, I might not even notice one or two.


--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not