Today's silly British newspaper typo

[dianeduane]

The Independent has turned Comet Swift-Tuttle into Comet Swift-Turtle. Twice.

(Not only a typo, but an oxymoron...!  Nice going, guys and gals.)

Oh well. Hope it clears up a little so that we can see the Perseids...

Comments

[hrrunka]

Heh! Maybe the proof reader had spent too much time reading Discworld novels...

Yesterday's Guardian contained an obituary for James Van Allen, with the sub-heading "Pioneering physicist who discovered the asteroid belts that bear his name and played a key role in US space exploration".

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Asteroid belts?!?

o_0 :-o

At least the Globe and Mail got it right over here.

[hrrunka]

Yep, that's what it says. Made my eyes roll for a while, too...

[dewline.livejournal.com]

...amazing...

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Glunk. I can't work out from the syntax whether they thought it was the belts (asteroid, radiation or suspender?) which played a key role or the man. But then I don't expect much accuracy of semantics, syntax or spelling from the Grauniad...

(Although I admit that I have on a number of occaasions misread that comet's name as 'Turtle', I don't think I've written it that way...)

[trdsf.livejournal.com]

*boggle* I hadn't heard he'd passed away... sad.

[hrrunka]

Yeah. 9th August. :(

The Guardian gave his obituary a whole page, which is an acknowledgement of sorts, as is their publishing it within a couple of days. A pity they couldn't check little details like the wording in the sub-heading...