Waterbury Democrat., 1902-03-26
ERRORS IN NEWSPAPERS,
Great Pains Taken to Prevent Them,
 But They Will Slip Through.

But They Will Slip Through. Few people realize the amount of care and attention the modern news paper gives to securing accuracy, yet ludicrous bulls are constantly occur ring in print The famous Oxford Bible case proved the almost impossi- bility of absolute accuracy in print ing. The story was that in England many years ago an effort was made to print q Bible which should be typo graphically perfect. Every precaution was taken, every proof was read again
 by separate corps of proofreaders. When they had corrected. as they sup posed, every error, the proofs were ex- posed ill public places and a reward of 95 was offered for each error found History records that on the first page serious blunder was discov- cred
 To prevent errors is one of the hardest duties imposed upon the mod ern newspaper man In the ordinary metropolitan paper of the west the lo- cal items-home news are read us- ually at least four times. First the reporter writes the story from his notes. (Eyery item is story in newspaper parlance). Before turning his copy to the city editor the reporter is required to read his copy over care fully and correct all errors. Then the city editor gives the copy second careful reading. Then the copy goes to the compositor, who, of course, reads it third time as he puts 1t into type, which with the original copy goes to the proofreader. He is the man whom everyone will blame if er- TOTS occur. Theoretically, he must know everything. He marks the er TOTS he discovers and the compositor then resets lines wherein mistakes have been made. Then another man sees that these corrected lines are placed in proper position and the er- roneous lines are thrown out Ere quently this Is not done carefully. as many paper shows. After all this is done the night editor and the make up' man, or foreman, usually glance over the type to see that no bad breaks are made. Yet they occur.
 There are hundred and one ways in which funny blunders occur in printing a newspaper. For instance, recently when Calve was in San Fran cisco the Examiner devoted nearly a whole page to excellent criticisms of the famous singer and her interpreta- tion of Carmen The criticism filled all but small part of the page. The man in the composing room, seek ing to fill out the space, found a short item with Carmen" in the head and slapped it into the form That was the reason why story of troubles of San Francisco street car employees got mixed up with the item about the op- era. All Carmen looked alike to the makeup man.
 Heads over items sometimes are mis- placed, with puzzling results to the readers. Subscribers to a Great Falls paper are yet wondering as to the sig nifcance of the head, sThe them ployed Get Unruly" over the daily re- port of the New York stock market. northern Montana minister who re- gently supplied a newspaper with a copy of his sermon on Mary Mazda lene, has not yet recovered from the shock of seeing the sermon in print next day bearing a large head with the bold, black legend, Saved From Life of Shame
 Humor is occasionally to be found in the advertising columns The Great Falls Tribune recently announced the loss of "a small, square ladys purse., It is not known whether the small. square female has recovered her prop erty or not.
 But the errors which get in are as nothing to those which are caught in time and kept out. It was not long ago that correspondent. in describ- ing the property of an estate, said 1t included "35 head of horses all brand ed upon the right shoulder with spear-shaped design, a hay rake, farming wagon and moving na- chine" The editor sent the note back to the writer with the sarcastic nota- ton: Poor horse! How could he bear it? Shouldn't the brand include also a picture of the farm?''
 Another item which read ssJohn Smith emitted q series of blood-curd- ling yells that disturbed those who were trying to sleep all the way from FrenchtoWn to Bonita,'' came back from the editor to the writer with the penciled suggestion: Quite a long sleep -Anaconda Standard.