You may have seen this photo trending on media. We will leave you to read out the caption loudly wherever you are.
The bottomline is the catastrophe that a misplaced letter can cause. Of course we know the editor or whoever does those captions and scrollers on GBS TV intended to say SACK but ended up typing out SUCK.
This rekindles the chilly story during the reign of Id Amin in Uganda, which has turned into a journalism fable. It is said that when Amin lambasted one of his ministers, one of the leading newspapers in Uganda then got so excited with the story and splashed it the following day.
The headline read: “AMIN RAPES MINISTER”. The editor, of course, meant to say ‘RAPS’. Raps is more dramatic than criticise and is headline friendly because its short and snappy.
The editor in chief of the newspaper was shot dead before he knew the mistake he had committed.
Such small things are big things in journalism. Like placing an apostrophe at the wrong section of a word. In fact, we have a lot of apostrophe catastrophes in our journalism and advertisements. Reminds you of a Daily Nation editorial that had the word PUBIC instead of public some time back!
These are crimes in journalism. A media house gets away with a simple apology in the best case scenario. Often the “small” mistake is ignored.
Some of these words, liked ‘suck’ above, are problems of homophones, words that have similar pronounciations but different meanings or spellings. We have seen the confusion between PEACE and PIECE, LACK and LUCK and many others. A little keenness can prevent this. Just having a second look or getting someone else to ‘edit’ you.
No one else has edited this piece, so you could get some catastrophes in it.
