Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1949-10-06

WHAT'S that word that SOUNDS
something like iodine which you
used in The Editor Speaks edi-
torial last week." inquired the
owner of the plant where the Sen
tinel is printed. Stumped for
second l soon found a typographi-
cal error had turned the word
"idiom" into "iodiom." But alas
that was not our worst typo last
week. CHANGING down the Safeway
ad to see if we could afford to eat
meat over the weekend, this item
met my eye "YAMB ROATS =
shoulder bone in, lb. 49c." The
price was pretty good SO the store
probably had many inquiries for
the new meat.
Anyway we have not recently
had anything quite as bad as an
ad we read about in a Washington
paper: "Wanted-man to wash
windows and two mattresses.
Like all other editors we gives
sigh of relief when our paper y
on the press and then a few hours
later we wait for the telephone to
ring.
"The Editors Dream" was the
recent title of Charles A. Wright's
column, Thinking Out Loud,
which appears, in four newspapers
published by the Tri-County Pub
fishing Co., Ardmore, Pa.
Mr.. Wright write, in part: "Once
upon a time newspaper editor
lay down for a few hours sleep at
the end of his busy day and in the
sleep he dreamed lovely dream.
1t was not a dream of great
wealth, or of exotic doings on some
South Sea Isle, or of hearing the
world applaud his name. For news
paper editors dream of other
things. The dream was so lovely
that seraphic smile illumined the
editors face. He dreamed that the
paper came out on time and
that Everything Was Right!
an the dream everything was in
the paper that anyone wanted in,
and yet nothing was in that any,
one might have preferred left out.
Every word was spelled right and
every comma was in it's proper
place. Every photograph was re-
produced beautifully and had the
right caption. When the stories
said Continued on Page g. they
really were continued on Page 6,
and not on some other page or left
out entirely.
"The newspaper editor deserved
his fleeing, happy dream because
all through the week he had
worked hard to create such per-
feet paper. When an Indignant
Subscriber had called up about an
error she had said: It's a wonder
you wouldn't be more careful, and
he had agreed that she was right.
Yet through the week a large part
of his time had been devoted toaa
fight against possible errors. He
had caught and eliminated errors
in the work of at least three of his
reporters; he had even caught a
misspelling in a Bible reference
iii an article written by a local
clergyman.
The reporters got lot of their
news from officers of clubs and
organizations and sometimes those
persons weren't too careful with
their facts, either.
"The reporters, when they
weren't tired or in love, or just
out of love, or victims of spring
fever, tried to be careful but some
times grumbled that it was no use
because the printer always mixed
things up anyway. That is famil-
lar plant in every newspaper
office and by now all printers must
be used to it, yet most printers
wage an endless fight against
errors, too. The good men set
column after column of type and
make very few mistakes and the
proofreader tries to correct those
mistakes but the errors that
aren't caught are the ones that
always seem the worst.
Weather affects machines as
we'll as men. Sometimes the heat
or the humidity or the cold or the
lack of humidity causes a letter to
get stuck in the linotype machine
and before anyone knows it line
after line gets set with that letter
missing.
"But, alas for the happiness Of
the editor and the reporters and
the linotype operators, even when
story is written perfectly and
edited carefully and set into type
without a single mistake, things
can happen. The makeup man,
in his rush to complete his page
on time, so it can get on press
on time, so that the papers can be
printed in time to make the deliv-
cries, transposes couple of lines,
or uses the wrong caption with
the picture, and nobody knows it
until the papers are printed and