Honestly!

[Treefrog]

In my edition of today's New York Times, the Section 2 front page teaser for the excellent article about Miriam Pellman (see today's Links thread) reads:

The distinct advantages of squinting down at Ballanchine from way up in the cheap seats.

Anyone else see this, or is it just we in the provinces who get the poor copy-editing?

[charlieloki]

for a tiny laugh (or a sob)

the front page of the arts and leisure section of my sunday's (02.20.05) new york times refers to an article about the fourth ring scene at the new york state theater

in that reference, mr b is "ballanchine"

[Dale]

I merged these threads as they are exactly the same. Have fun laughing at the New York Times....

[Farrell Fan]

Thanks for calling this to our attention, because I otherwise would have missed the article on Miriam Pellman, who's a friend of mine.

[Alexandra]

There's a link to the article on today's Links.

[Daniil]

You couldn't imagine, how often russian names are not right spelled. Not that there is one letter, as a l, too much or too less, there is the whole name wrong.

[Helene]

You couldn't imagine, how often russian names are not right spelled. Not that there is one letter, as a l, too much or too less, there is the whole name wrong.

You're so right that we Westerners tend to butcher Russian names, especially since in each language there's a different set of transliteration logic from Cyrillic, based on the letters and sounds available in each Western language. Living in Germany, I'm sure you see this all the time, especially when comparing German transliterations to the ones in English and American media.

"Balanchine," though, was born Balanchivadze -- he was Georgian -- and was renamed Balanchine when he joined Diaghilev's company in Paris. So we don't think the New York Times has any excuses for this one

[carbro]

He was one of New York's most distinguished and esteemed residents for over 40 years. You'd think in what became his home town, the cultural editors of the leading daily newspaper would know better! Shame on them!

[sandik]

Proofreading is a dicey proposition everywhere. I worked on a project in Seattle a few years ago to create a tourism brochure that promoted local arts organizations. The final copy was looked over by several people, none of whom noticed that Balanchine was spelled with two "l"s.

But today's paper (Seattle Times) gave me the giggles. In a section called "Rant and Rave" (readers write and phone in their complaints and compliments) someone was lauding the two men who "used their wench" to pull her car out of a ditch. To make it even more perfect, it was on the same page as James Kilpatrick's syndicated column on language and usage. The subject today was poor proofreading, and the example he used was a description of Donald Rumsfeld "circumventing the globe." There are days when everything conspires to make you laugh.

[zerbinetta]

[quote name=sandik' date='Feb 21 2005... the example he used was a description of Donald Rumsfeld "circumventing the globe."

[/quote]

Rummy circumventing?

Naaaaaah .. :rolleyes:

[Mel Johnson]

In this age of spell-check, we are also faced with the GIGO phenomenon. That stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out." Some person with a little authority on the Arts & Leisure section had possibly entered the misspelling into the machine lexicon, and nobody else caught it. It's not an excuse, but it could be a potential explanation.

[Helene]

In this age of spell-check, we are also faced with the GIGO phenomenon.  That stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out."  Some person with a little authority on the Arts & Leisure section had possibly entered the misspelling into the machine lexicon, and nobody else caught it.  It's not an excuse, but it could be a potential explanation.

Or in the civilian world, accidentally adding the incorrect spelling into the spell check dictionary when prompted.

[sandik]

In this age of spell-check, we are also faced with the GIGO phenomenon.  That stands for "Garbage In, Garbage Out."  Some person with a little authority on the Arts & Leisure section had possibly entered the misspelling into the machine lexicon, and nobody else caught it.  It's not an excuse, but it could be a potential explanation.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Or in the civilian world, accidentally adding the incorrect spelling into the spell check dictionary when prompted.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In both of these cases (winch and wench, circumnavigating and circumventing) it's not a case of misspelling -- they are all real words, and so if you are depending on the spell check function to flag difficulties, you could miss these mistakes.

[justafan]

To be fair, the incorrect spelling was limited to the headline on the front page teaser. That was written by a copy editor, who may or may not be familiar with the arts. Balanchine was spelled correctly in the article itself. So it was simply a "typo."

[Farrell Fan]

I know I posted something on this before, but it seems worth recalling again that many years ago around February 14 I bought my wife a button with a heart-shaped design which read "Be My Balanchine." That made little sense unless you pronounced the name "Balanshine."

[Mel Johnson]

To be fair, the incorrect spelling was limited to the headline on the front page teaser. That was written by a copy editor, who may or may not be familiar with the arts. Balanchine was spelled correctly in the article itself. So it was simply a "typo."

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Quite so; that is just such a "person in authority" I had in mind. But I bet when s/he fed "Balanchine" into the spell-check dictionary, it came back with "Ballantine" either for the books or the beer! It's a typo, but we expect more from the "newspaper of record".

[Petra]

FF, that's a beautiful story.

Now I know what to look for on ebay for next year's Valentine's Day.

[sandik]

In the spirit of "once you see a typo, you're looking for them everywhere" Balanchine's name was misspelled in one of the news items on today's links page

http://www.soundgenerator.com/news/index.cfm?articleid=5064

Towards the end -- "Balanhine"