Thursday, February 19, 2009

Snarky Scotsman!

What is worse than an editor who miscorrects text, introducing an error where no error existed before?

Perhaps a blogger who keeps promising to visit his blog friends and barely follows through?

I did swing by Trisia's bloghouse last night, and Maria's briefly today, but I am still embarassingly behind. And I can't expect visitors here if I never leave Isis, can I? That's an iron rule of blogworld: you have to give to get.

Today, I had to send out a release about a local concert series which would feature the classic works of Aaron Copland. Yes, Copland, not Copeland.But yours truly introduced an "e" into the text that was sent to me, being quite unfamiliar with the family history and the doughty old Scotch immigrant who anglicized the family name from Kaplan to Copland.

A little research would have saved me, but I did not do it. I thought I knew best.

No one has called me on the carpet yet. But the day is still young.

2 comments:

Cristina said...

Perhaps I'm biased (seeing I did get a visit) but I don't think that was such a stupid thing to do. Just a minor thingy (I would have researched, but that's because I hadn't heard of the guy before).

I suppose there isn't any chance of re-editing the text and getting rid of the problem?

In any case, don't lose heart. We all need to make a few mistakes every now and then, just to remember we're not all that. :P
(and you're so good at spelling that this really doesn't matter)

Eastcoastdweller said...

Trisia: Thanks for the comfort. It's just that for an editor, not messing up someone else's text is a cardinal rule. You learn that way back in school. And when a press release is sent out to literally hundreds of people, it's quite embarrassing to have to recall it.

Oh well. Just as I will never misspell "apostrophe" again, having lost the fifth grade district spelling bee on that word many years ago, I will never goof up Aaron Copland's name again.

What amazes me, Trisia, is that YOU are so very polished in English -- I keep forgetting that it is not your native tongue until I hit paragraphs of Romanian every now and then in your blog.

By the way, I have been reading about a place on the edge of the
Roman Empire called Dacia lately. Might be familiar to you.