The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-03-24
ERRORS IN NEWSPAPERS.
Great Pains Taken to Prevent Them
 But They Will Slip Through.

Great Pains Taken to Prevent Them
 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 impos- sibility of absolute accuracy in print ing. The story was that in England many years ago an effort was made to print Bible which should be typo graphically perfect, Every precaution was taken, every proof was read again by separate corps of proof readers. When they had corrected, as they had supposed, every error the proofs were exposed in public places and a reward of e5 was offered for each error found. History records that on the first page a serious blunder was discovered.
 To prevent errors is one of the hard est duties imposed upon the modern newspaper man In the ordinary metro politan paper of the west the local items-home news-are read usually at least four times First the reporter writes the story from his notes. (Every item Is story in newspaper parlance), Before turning his copy to the city editor the reporter Is required to read his copy over carefully and to correct all errors. Then the city editor gives the copy a second careful reading. Then the copy goes to the compositor, who 1.- ,;,.I 1.n puts it into type. which with the orig inal copy goes to the proofreader, He is the man whom every one will blame if errors occur. Theoretically. he must know everything. He marks the errors 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 erroneous lines are thrown out. Frequently this is not done carefully, as many paper shows. After all this is done the night editor and the makeup" man, or foreman, usually glance over the tyne to see that no bad breaks are made. Yet they occur.
 There are a hundred and one ways
 
 printing 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 ar l her interpreta- tion of Carmen" The criticism filed all but a small part of the page. The man in the composing room, seeking to fill out the space, found short item with Carmen" in the head and slap ped 1t into the form. That was the req son why q story of troubles of San Francisco street car employees got mix ed up with the item about the opera. All Carmen" looked alike to the make up man.
 Heads over items sometimes are mis- | placed, with puzzling results to the readers. Subscribers to Great Falls |. paper are yet wondering as to the significance of the head "The Trnem- ployed Get Tnruly" over the daily re- port of the New York stock market A northern Montana minister who re- 'ently supplied a newspaper with a 7opy of his sermon on Mary Mazda | enc, has not yet recovered from the | shock of seeing the sermon in print ! lPNl udy btdIlllS V. .IdISt HHdu WlJn . the bold, black legend, Saved from a Life of Shame" i
 Humor is occasionally to b. found ! n the advertising columns. The Great | Falls Tribune recently announced the oss of "a small, square lady's purse" | 1t is not known whether the small | square female has recovered her prop i erty or not.
 But the errors which get in are as nothing to those which are caught in | ime and kept out. It was not long ago hat a correspondent, in describing the of an estate, said it included 1 '35 head of horses all branded upon the fight shoulder with a spear- shaped de- ign, hay rake a farming wagon and
 moving machine" The editor sent he item back to the writer with the notation: Poor horsel How ould he bear it? Shouldn't the brand include also picture of the farm ?'
 Another item, which read John