It was the summer of 1980. A warm Thursday afternoon. Birds sang in the trees, shoppers browsed for bargains. Few suspected that a terrible calamity was about to be inflicted upon the Dundee & District lawn bowls community.
I was an apprentice in a newspaper caseroom. My job was corr boy. I had to nip in to hot metal pages and replace lines of type identified (by the readers’ department) as requiring corrections.
The introductory paragraph of the main page four news report had a mistake. However, I became distracted. Someone spoke to me, drew my interest. When I turned back I didn’t put the replacement line into page four, I put it in the bowls intro on page 17, the partner of that page. Crucially, I didn’t take the time to check my work. The bowls report went to press containing a line that belonged in the news story.
I was figuratively crucified. After my overseer lambasted me (terrible in itself) I was summoned by the editor and scourged, with spittle-flecked vehemence. I barely got out with body and soul intact. As a 17-year-old laddie this was a greatly chastening experience. I was a quivering wreck.
Many times I have had cause to thank those men for the fire and brimstone they rained upon me that day. They drummed in a hard lesson and I never forgot it: when you do a job, do it properly. Then double check. Every time. That’s what I’ve done in the years since. The newspaper trade is unforgiving. Doctors bury their mistakes, newspapers publish theirs for everyone to laugh at.
When you write something that will be read by others, check it twice. Check it again. The more important it is, the more checks you do.
The Aberdeen FC footballers who broke lockdown rules issued an apologetic statement. But it had a glaring error in the penultimate paragraph. That statement would have been discussed, ruminated over, re-worded, and weighed for tone and nuances of meaning by the club’s PR department. But they concentrated solely on the message it carried, not the nuts and bolts of how the sentences were put together.
I empathise with whoever made this mistake, but do not sympathise. This was an important piece of writing. It should have been right. It should have been checked. Everyone has to write, or say, something important at some point in life. If you don’t want to look foolish, take it from a traumatised 1980s corr boy: double check.
Word of the week
Aureate (adjective)
Of golden colour or brilliance. EG: “I learned an aureate rule that day in 1980, once I’d recovered from the verbal thrashings.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
