April 24, 2008
Proofreading Philly
Proofreading Philly tries to capture typos, wordos, and all other kinds of grammatical mistakes that we see around the city. But we need your help! Email photos to us from your computer or your phone, and show the city that you care about good grammar.
Once in a while, Proofreading Philly turns into Fact-checking (Phact-checking?) Philly, and this is one of those times. We just wouldn't be responsible bloggers if we didn't correct CBS 3's error on a favorite blogosphere topic, Star Wars. While the article has been corrected (without acknowledging the original error—how unprofessional!), we just had to post this screengrab, courtesy of Eric and Editor Jim, of the article on the day it published. Because when you can't be bothered to look at IMDB or Wikipedia to confirm a date, you deserve to be called out for it.
(Who else thinks that the error was caught by a reader, not the reporter or her editor?)
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epic space opera?
That is actually accurate. Star Wars is often described as a space opera. It doesn't mean a literal opera with fat ladies singing and stuff; as always, Wikipedia is your friend.
Oh wow...I think I'll stick to science-fiction operas...
The error is in the first few words.
It's not "For more than 40 years..." since 40 years ago would be 1968.
Star Wars came out in '77, and Geekadelphia pointed this out earlier in the week, noting that that first sentence should have read "For more than 30 years..."
And for that error, they got an "Epic Fail." Lol.
That, I think, is the Proofreading error, not the space opera bit.
phillybits: Correct! That is indeed what we were pointing out. Dickiej just seemed confused, so I wanted to make sure everybody knew what space operas were. Because I love a good space opera. :)