“It isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Tetris. It’s Taron Egerton,” Ian announced from the other side of our shared home office, while reading my piece last week about video games that had just landed in his inbox.
I once signed off the December issue of a magazine I worked on with
CRISTMAS ISSUE on the cover!!! 80,000 of the fxckers were printed and distributed. I got just one email pointing it out. Like you I remember cutting, gluing and worrying about character/line counts. The past is a etc. Great post. X
Thanks, Steven. Noooooo! Amazing that you only got the one email!
The designers got really creative on fashion spreads and wanted type to weave around the photos in wiggly lines. A nightmare for positioning on the paste up, but miraculously it worked and to my knowledge nothing dropped off.
There was all the keeping tabs on photo transparencies, too.
It was the early 90s, and I was in my first job as an academic—a lecturer at a polytechnic design school. One of my tasks, along with a fellow lecturer, was to design, print, and distribute posters for the annual degree show. We worked hard on the design, and had several hundred posters printed. The centrepiece of the design was the phrase "Design Degree Show" in large, bold type. We set up shop in my colleague’s office to distribute the posters.
The process was simple but time-consuming: we rolled up each poster, placed it in a tube, and stuck an address label on it. With three of us working at a steady pace, we’d already managed to get a couple of hundred done. But as the deadline loomed, we started to feel the pressure.
Desperate to speed things up, we offered a passing student a tenner to lend a hand. He stepped into the office, looked at the stack of posters, and asked, “Isn’t there an ‘i’ in design?”
There it was, in massive bold letters: "Desgn Degree Show."
Hundreds of posters. Hundreds of tubes. Hours of work. And one glaring, career-defining typo.
I went back to my old school years later to do some photography for them. While there I was given a mug. They'd had hundreds of the things made, with the proud legend 'Lancaster Royal Grammer School'.
A lovely, honest, very relatable post, Wendy. I get nervous every time I post a chapter. Just an overlooked comma on my part gives me the heebie-jeebies. Having said that, I am perfectly happy with your Leonardo di Caprio error - both before (when I took it as correct) and after your admission of error. It’s always lovely knowing others are fallible too!
I thought the Leonardo / Taron faux pas was pretty funny and relatable, Wendy! As my therapist used to say to me when I was having one breakdown or another about some mistake I'd made: "WELCOME TO THE HUMAN RACE!" The worst work eff-up I can think of (thankfully, it did not involve me) involved my colleague on a call with a much-hated client. He was making some hand gestures throughout the call, but it only dawned on him later that day that the camera had been on the whole time. Needless to say, the client was gone, and everyone was happier for it.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, currently is up shit cheek in his political career. And it makes me kind of regret having a fictionalized version of him in one of my novels, because time is not kind to politicans.
I can't think of a specific mistake right now but I have definitely made my fair share of them. I worked as a Communications Coordinator for a charity and was responsible for sending out digital newsletters, invitations, etc. to a mailing list of hundreds. I usually had another pair of eyes go over them before sending them out. Then I agonized and re-read each publication a ridiculous number of times myself before finally hitting the "send" button. Did that mean there was never an error in one? No, no, it did not!
I still find it easier to spot errors if I print copy out, which of course I rarely do these days. I was taught to proofread a bit like a child does, running my finger along one line at a time. But it’s far harder to do that on screen!
that's so funny about the price missing on the magazine, brilliant!
I was doing PR for a bird food manufacturer, way back when, and we did a talking budgerigar contest (I know, awful idea). Turns out that budgies in the UK that speak have a filthy repertoire and my ignorant acct exec happily told the Sun newspaper about this, you can imagine the rest. We got fired. Of course I thought it was brilliant coverage but the client had no sense of humour.
Lovely stuff Wendy. It's so hard to spot some mistakes and I miss the luxury of having a news editor and sub editor to proof. Although there has been more than one sub editor responsible for some rather dubious headlines on my work in the past. It's next to impossible to call a newspaper's newsdesk now unless you know someone there. How times have changed.
Thanks as always for pointing me in the direction of other sub stackers too.
my mistake was sending an email where I was ranting about a colleague, to the colleague being ranted about! Luckily I'd not included their name and they thought I was ranting about a customer. PHEW!
My worst ‘journalistic’ mistake was writing about a cycling event (‘Liverpool Roubaix’ which had been organised (and excellently) by Franciis Longworth. I’d corresponded with him beforehand and talked to him after crossing the line. But when I wrote up the piece I cited him as ‘Francis Coulson’.
Francis Coulson MBE (1919—98) is a real person, but has no connection with cycling that I know of. He was co-founder of Sharrow Bay Hotel in the Lake District, one of the pioneers of the now-ubiquitous country-house hotel style. And the birthplace of sticky toffee pudding.
My other worst mistake at work was driving from Lancaster to Castle Howard (well beyond York) to photograph an open air concert with fireworks. On the wrong day.
Fortunately, I was a day early, not a day late. That would surely have kiboshed what became a good regular gig for several years.
I am the king of the post-publish edit. It's almost physically impossible for me to get it right the first time. Not just on my Stack, that holds true in my day job (I'm a content analyst). I think it's over-eagerness.
Worst mistake I ever made was somehow archiving the whole root of a website in the back end. Straight on the phone to the provider for some help. "Lewis, that's not possible." I very quickly showed him that it was.
I imagine that took some unravelling, Lewis. And 'king of the post-publish edit' is a great phrase! Thanks for commenting – and thanks very much for subscribing, just spotted that!
Wow , that is crazy to think you had to go through all of that to publish work. We have advanced so much haven’t we! Great post Wendy. 😊
I once gave someone a very cheap holiday when I was temping in Australia at the travel agents I worked for in London, I couldn’t work out the maths and all the percentages just really confused me😂 the customer was very happy and no one told me off about it, but I remember feeling very worried.
I worked briefly in the new media division at Sony Music, where in the 90's we'd put the CD-Rom content onto artists' albums. Sometimes games, or trivia, or extra videos—all sorts of stuff. We'd burn what was called the "golden master" and carry this thing like it was nuclear material, taking a car service over to the studio, where it would be mastered and sent out to become, potentially, millions of copies.
The first artist we did this with was Mariah Carey, at her peak. Radio stations around the world received the CDs with our extra content, and these CD's wouldn't play on their consoles, meaning, no radio play for the album, right at the holidays.
The president of the company came to our department and said figure this out today, or you're all fired. After a few panicked hours, someone thankfully figured out that the consoles needed a dipswitch flipped somewhere to play these CDs with media content on them. Jobs saved—barely. Not a fun day! Otherwise a pretty fun job, though.
Well, there was a woman whose name I can't recall who worked at the studios who used to roll her eyes at everyone being all stressy, and she'd say, "People! We are not saving lives!"
This has brought back some interesting mistakes... However, the one that still keeps me up at night is when I interviewed for a role years ago at a place I wasn't expecting to be called for an interview at all. I was doing well until 30 minutes in the interviewers decided to light up a bit and asked me to tell them a bit about myself as a person. I froze and went blank for a couple of minutes before I started blurting out incoherences. Of all the things I had thought of saying it didn't occur to me to prepare two lines on myself! It went completely downhill from there and it didn't help their faces couldn't hide it 😂
Oof, yes, that would make me freeze in the headlights too, Cristina. It’s probably a great interview topic for extroverts, not so much for introverts. A good reminder to prepare for that question in advance!
I learned my lesson: the next job I went for was one where my future line manager already knew me (we collaborated often on events) so I didn't have to go through that ordeal again 😂
Every job interview I did in my 20s felt awkward like that, you’re not alone. I did get work but not via interview! Basically, by showing I cd do a job & not by self-consciously blathering on about it. :)
I think that should be the key. I feel interviews are good but not for introverts like me who can make total fool of themselves in front of prospective employers...
Thanks, Prajna! Yes, I bet anyone working in catering at any level has a raft of mistakes they wince at. (Like me telling the experienced chef that some of the cheese was "mouldy", as I mentioned in my Yorkshire hotel dogsbody piece – having never seen blue cheese before!)
I think every writer thinks of tweaks they should have made the minute after they hit the 'publish' button. Like shoving a letter into the slot. But at least you weren't sued. I did several books on recidivist paedophiles and sex offenders which involved meticulous research through the courts trying to ensure they didn't get name suppression in a higher court, and also tip-toeing my way through our Privacy Act (I was compiling a list, it seems) and one rapist, who had committed two rapes, had subsequently successfully appealed his second conviction (which I'd failed to discover) and sued me for defamation because he'd only been a 'once rapist'. I fought it, and in the end it was settled (reputation), but it cost me a shitload of money. Ironically, the original detective was so furious he got the Crown to appeal again and he got reconvicted.
That must have been really stressful, Deborah. Investigative writing is really difficult and time-consuming and it's so important it continues and is done well. Full of admiration. I like the denouement of your comment!
I once signed off the December issue of a magazine I worked on with
CRISTMAS ISSUE on the cover!!! 80,000 of the fxckers were printed and distributed. I got just one email pointing it out. Like you I remember cutting, gluing and worrying about character/line counts. The past is a etc. Great post. X
Thanks, Steven. Noooooo! Amazing that you only got the one email!
The designers got really creative on fashion spreads and wanted type to weave around the photos in wiggly lines. A nightmare for positioning on the paste up, but miraculously it worked and to my knowledge nothing dropped off.
There was all the keeping tabs on photo transparencies, too.
Happy CRISTMAS!!
A great piece - as always!
It was the early 90s, and I was in my first job as an academic—a lecturer at a polytechnic design school. One of my tasks, along with a fellow lecturer, was to design, print, and distribute posters for the annual degree show. We worked hard on the design, and had several hundred posters printed. The centrepiece of the design was the phrase "Design Degree Show" in large, bold type. We set up shop in my colleague’s office to distribute the posters.
The process was simple but time-consuming: we rolled up each poster, placed it in a tube, and stuck an address label on it. With three of us working at a steady pace, we’d already managed to get a couple of hundred done. But as the deadline loomed, we started to feel the pressure.
Desperate to speed things up, we offered a passing student a tenner to lend a hand. He stepped into the office, looked at the stack of posters, and asked, “Isn’t there an ‘i’ in design?”
There it was, in massive bold letters: "Desgn Degree Show."
Hundreds of posters. Hundreds of tubes. Hours of work. And one glaring, career-defining typo.
Thanks, Mike. And argh! I am wincing at that typo! Oof!
Yes. I still sometimes wake up screaming in the night with that one.
I went back to my old school years later to do some photography for them. While there I was given a mug. They'd had hundreds of the things made, with the proud legend 'Lancaster Royal Grammer School'.
Noooo! That’s an unforgivable slip of standards!
Thanks for your comments :D
A lovely, honest, very relatable post, Wendy. I get nervous every time I post a chapter. Just an overlooked comma on my part gives me the heebie-jeebies. Having said that, I am perfectly happy with your Leonardo di Caprio error - both before (when I took it as correct) and after your admission of error. It’s always lovely knowing others are fallible too!
Thank you, Emma! Sticklers Anonymous!
Glad I appeared to know what I was talking about last week :D
I thought the Leonardo / Taron faux pas was pretty funny and relatable, Wendy! As my therapist used to say to me when I was having one breakdown or another about some mistake I'd made: "WELCOME TO THE HUMAN RACE!" The worst work eff-up I can think of (thankfully, it did not involve me) involved my colleague on a call with a much-hated client. He was making some hand gestures throughout the call, but it only dawned on him later that day that the camera had been on the whole time. Needless to say, the client was gone, and everyone was happier for it.
Thanks, Sarah. Argh no! There are even more pitfalls now – cameras, mics, and it's also way too easy to message the wrong person.
Completely! I live in perpetual fear of a diabolical “reply all” failure
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, currently is up shit cheek in his political career. And it makes me kind of regret having a fictionalized version of him in one of my novels, because time is not kind to politicans.
Oh yes, that must be annoying, David. Perhaps you can bring out a new edition. Or write a sequel! Thank you for your comment.
Yes, I can always revise it. But most people outside of Canada don't really follow Canadian politics, so in other countries it would still work.
I can't think of a specific mistake right now but I have definitely made my fair share of them. I worked as a Communications Coordinator for a charity and was responsible for sending out digital newsletters, invitations, etc. to a mailing list of hundreds. I usually had another pair of eyes go over them before sending them out. Then I agonized and re-read each publication a ridiculous number of times myself before finally hitting the "send" button. Did that mean there was never an error in one? No, no, it did not!
Thanks, Linda!
I still find it easier to spot errors if I print copy out, which of course I rarely do these days. I was taught to proofread a bit like a child does, running my finger along one line at a time. But it’s far harder to do that on screen!
that's so funny about the price missing on the magazine, brilliant!
I was doing PR for a bird food manufacturer, way back when, and we did a talking budgerigar contest (I know, awful idea). Turns out that budgies in the UK that speak have a filthy repertoire and my ignorant acct exec happily told the Sun newspaper about this, you can imagine the rest. We got fired. Of course I thought it was brilliant coverage but the client had no sense of humour.
Happy Christmas!
Thanks, Rosalind. Oh wow, budgies and their four-letter words :D What could possibly go wrong?! Sorry your client had no sense of humour.
Happy Christmas to you, too!
Lovely stuff Wendy. It's so hard to spot some mistakes and I miss the luxury of having a news editor and sub editor to proof. Although there has been more than one sub editor responsible for some rather dubious headlines on my work in the past. It's next to impossible to call a newspaper's newsdesk now unless you know someone there. How times have changed.
Thanks as always for pointing me in the direction of other sub stackers too.
Wishing you and Ian a very Merry Christmas.
I look forward to reading more in 2025.
Thank you, Margaret. It really helps to have a second reader, I agree. We all have our blind spots!
Yes, isn't it weird that newsdesks are now so impenetrable? Not everyone is online.
Happy Christmas to you too, Margaret!
my mistake was sending an email where I was ranting about a colleague, to the colleague being ranted about! Luckily I'd not included their name and they thought I was ranting about a customer. PHEW!
Woah! Very lucky escape there, Ruth! Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
My worst ‘journalistic’ mistake was writing about a cycling event (‘Liverpool Roubaix’ which had been organised (and excellently) by Franciis Longworth. I’d corresponded with him beforehand and talked to him after crossing the line. But when I wrote up the piece I cited him as ‘Francis Coulson’.
Francis Coulson MBE (1919—98) is a real person, but has no connection with cycling that I know of. He was co-founder of Sharrow Bay Hotel in the Lake District, one of the pioneers of the now-ubiquitous country-house hotel style. And the birthplace of sticky toffee pudding.
My other worst mistake at work was driving from Lancaster to Castle Howard (well beyond York) to photograph an open air concert with fireworks. On the wrong day.
Fortunately, I was a day early, not a day late. That would surely have kiboshed what became a good regular gig for several years.
I am the king of the post-publish edit. It's almost physically impossible for me to get it right the first time. Not just on my Stack, that holds true in my day job (I'm a content analyst). I think it's over-eagerness.
Worst mistake I ever made was somehow archiving the whole root of a website in the back end. Straight on the phone to the provider for some help. "Lewis, that's not possible." I very quickly showed him that it was.
I imagine that took some unravelling, Lewis. And 'king of the post-publish edit' is a great phrase! Thanks for commenting – and thanks very much for subscribing, just spotted that!
Wow , that is crazy to think you had to go through all of that to publish work. We have advanced so much haven’t we! Great post Wendy. 😊
I once gave someone a very cheap holiday when I was temping in Australia at the travel agents I worked for in London, I couldn’t work out the maths and all the percentages just really confused me😂 the customer was very happy and no one told me off about it, but I remember feeling very worried.
Thanks, Francis. It does seem a world away when we can now publish on our phone if we want to!
Oh wow, what a treat, getting a holiday on the cheap! I expect they'd have given you a glowing review.
😆
I love hearing the process—so many steps!
I worked briefly in the new media division at Sony Music, where in the 90's we'd put the CD-Rom content onto artists' albums. Sometimes games, or trivia, or extra videos—all sorts of stuff. We'd burn what was called the "golden master" and carry this thing like it was nuclear material, taking a car service over to the studio, where it would be mastered and sent out to become, potentially, millions of copies.
The first artist we did this with was Mariah Carey, at her peak. Radio stations around the world received the CDs with our extra content, and these CD's wouldn't play on their consoles, meaning, no radio play for the album, right at the holidays.
The president of the company came to our department and said figure this out today, or you're all fired. After a few panicked hours, someone thankfully figured out that the consoles needed a dipswitch flipped somewhere to play these CDs with media content on them. Jobs saved—barely. Not a fun day! Otherwise a pretty fun job, though.
Thank you, Rob.
Phew – saved by the dipswitch! And being in charge of the "golden master" sounds intensely stressful.
Well, there was a woman whose name I can't recall who worked at the studios who used to roll her eyes at everyone being all stressy, and she'd say, "People! We are not saving lives!"
That's a good perspective! (Unless you actually ARE saving lives.)
This has brought back some interesting mistakes... However, the one that still keeps me up at night is when I interviewed for a role years ago at a place I wasn't expecting to be called for an interview at all. I was doing well until 30 minutes in the interviewers decided to light up a bit and asked me to tell them a bit about myself as a person. I froze and went blank for a couple of minutes before I started blurting out incoherences. Of all the things I had thought of saying it didn't occur to me to prepare two lines on myself! It went completely downhill from there and it didn't help their faces couldn't hide it 😂
Oof, yes, that would make me freeze in the headlights too, Cristina. It’s probably a great interview topic for extroverts, not so much for introverts. A good reminder to prepare for that question in advance!
I learned my lesson: the next job I went for was one where my future line manager already knew me (we collaborated often on events) so I didn't have to go through that ordeal again 😂
Every job interview I did in my 20s felt awkward like that, you’re not alone. I did get work but not via interview! Basically, by showing I cd do a job & not by self-consciously blathering on about it. :)
I think that should be the key. I feel interviews are good but not for introverts like me who can make total fool of themselves in front of prospective employers...
Great post Wendy.
Back in the college days I worked at this fellowship center as the serving meals for up to 200 people family style.
Heat of the production line feels similar as soon as everything is out on the table you wonder if you put in the salt? Or something similar!
Hard to pull it back
I love your honesty and attention to detail.
Thanks, Prajna! Yes, I bet anyone working in catering at any level has a raft of mistakes they wince at. (Like me telling the experienced chef that some of the cheese was "mouldy", as I mentioned in my Yorkshire hotel dogsbody piece – having never seen blue cheese before!)
I think every writer thinks of tweaks they should have made the minute after they hit the 'publish' button. Like shoving a letter into the slot. But at least you weren't sued. I did several books on recidivist paedophiles and sex offenders which involved meticulous research through the courts trying to ensure they didn't get name suppression in a higher court, and also tip-toeing my way through our Privacy Act (I was compiling a list, it seems) and one rapist, who had committed two rapes, had subsequently successfully appealed his second conviction (which I'd failed to discover) and sued me for defamation because he'd only been a 'once rapist'. I fought it, and in the end it was settled (reputation), but it cost me a shitload of money. Ironically, the original detective was so furious he got the Crown to appeal again and he got reconvicted.
That must have been really stressful, Deborah. Investigative writing is really difficult and time-consuming and it's so important it continues and is done well. Full of admiration. I like the denouement of your comment!