Rocks, cougars, the Tortilla Race, ordering online, and typos.
Am I the only one who has noticed a certain… reluctance on the part of online sites to provide contact information? The art store responded immediately regarding a purchase, but the tool company did not respond to my email about when my toolbox might be shipped. There is no phone number on that website. I had to email my cancellation.
And now The Guardian. I love the UK newspaper and I send them money, but I found a story this morning that was problematic.
ía Coapan, Mexico The town’s 29th Tortilla Race, in which entrants wear traditional dresses and run 6km carrying 15kg of tortillas
I read the caption twice. Aside from the obvious—15kg is weighty—I wondered how the children shown could carry the much weight, and because I make tortillas myself, I wondered where it was. Fifteen kilos is about 33 pounds and bulky. So I DuckDuck-searched and found the story in yesterday’s Mexico News Daily: ” ’12 year-old girl wins 29th annual tortilla race in Puebla.’ Paula Michelle De Jesús Marcos ran in the children’s category but was also the overall winner.” She was carrying 3 kilos. In the Open category, women carried the maximum of 6 kilos. The distance is just over 5 kilometers not 6, and a distance I also know personally. That’s 3.1 miles.
So. The Guardian‘s caption was inaccurate but even though I found a way to email and let them know, I haven’t.
In the mean time, three cougars were caught on a doorbell camera in the small coastal town of Neskowin, which is about 66 miles south via highway 101. They are small, young, probably weighing less than a small Labrador Retriever. Pound for pound, cats are far more dangerous than a Lab, but they really don’t want to mess with people. We don’t taste good, remember? [Find that story HERE.]
And I wrote a great deal more about pelicans, cougars and men calling them “lions”, and about ill-advised online orders and typos, but my draft froze and when I gave up and reloaded, all but the second paragraph and the Tortilla Race photo were gone. It probably wasn’t important.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 
It would be interesting to see how The Guardian would or not reply.
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Also interesting to know if you are the only one who caught it!
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In my experience, it is very rare that people appreciate having their mistakes pointed out. Vanishingly rare. The application from an excellent candidate for office manager where I worked was tossed in the trash because she pointing out typos in the job description. We actually needed exactly that skillset in that position, but she offended the person who saw the application first.
I find mistakes all the time, errors of fact and grammatical errors (and grammar isn’t even my strong point—as any editor I’ve ever worked with would attest). Mostly I keep my mouth shut. When I have pointed out errors, I offend, irritate, or trigger sarcasm. Mistakes are very rarely corrected.
I used to explain to my students why it was important not to use a comma splice (look it up). It is a tiny error and not always an error, but people who recognize a comma splice delight in pouncing on one and judging the person who made that “error” an idiot. Errors don’t make anyone an idiot, but there are times when we cannot afford to be judged.
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I guess I am used to reading letters to editors and the writer being thanked for their corrections in NYT and New Yorker. I understand your reluctance.
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if the debil is in the details, then it never hurks to pwoofread.unless of course your like me and never makes a mistake–even though I know I’m wrong others agree with me that I’m right–that being sad -very very sad I can’t remember what we are talking about–probably need to lie down now or something
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