The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Corrections and clarifications

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Friday, Aug 15, 2008
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Corrections and clarifications

* * A correction published in yesterday’s paper has produced critical and caustic comments from readers, for it repeated some of the mistakes sought to be corrected. I have received no satisfactory explanation about how the mistakes, in the article and in the correction, occurred. The editorial desk says it was aware of what was being published and did not make any change. The technical side says it was not responsible. It appears to be a freak, which needs further study.

For the record, this is what the correction said:

“Some readers have pointed out that in Hasan Suroor’s article, “Here is the “sunny” side of economic crunch,” (Op-Ed page, August 13, 2008), some of the words do not have “variant spellings” but only the normal ones. Hasan Suroor clarifies that the original copy read as follows: “Frustrated by his students’ poor spelling, a British academic has controversially suggested falling back on that oldest trick in the book: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Ken Smith of Buckinghamshire New University wants pundits to agree on a set of “variant spellings” of some of the more commonly misspelt words such as “thier” for “their,” “arguement” for “argument,” “twelth” for “twelfth,” “truely” for “truly” and — horror of horrors — “speach” for “speech”! His argument is that these (and a host of other) words are so routinely misspelt that it is best to accept the “variant spellings” instead of moaning about them.””

In the same article, a word “dosh” has readers asking what it means. It is a British informal word for money.

* * A sentence in an article, “Lone killer or a complex cover-up: the story of the 2001 anthrax mailings,” (Op-Ed, August 13, 2008), read as: “Following that The New York Times published a report on secret and highly provocative U.S. biological weapons related activities, including the construction of an anthrax production plant in Nevada, the genetic engineering of anthrax for with no protection from existing vaccines, and the manufacture of biological bomblet prototypes.” The writer, Sujatha Byravan, clarifies that it should be “anthrax for which there is no protection from existing vaccines.”

* * Rafael Arevaldo belongs to El Salvador as mentioned in the results column. It was wrongly given as Spain in a report, “Paes and Bhupathi get past first hurdle” (Sport, August 13, 2008).

It is the policy of The Hindu to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page.

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