COLUMN: Fixing two errors

Due to the obvious limitations of the Coeur d’Alene Press’ software that auto-spaces the printed words in the various column spaces available on their newsprint; carefully worded, edited and proofread guest columns can be presented to the readers of The Press inaccurately.

In the Saturday edition on the front page, left column, Local section, a guest opinion column written by Jon Keith had two minor, yet damaging errors that tainted the column. Not the overall point, but nonetheless, the integrity of the thought behind the piece is called into question by what appear to be sloppy errors. I have noted this before. What appear to be well thought out pieces by other writers have these head scratching misspellings or syntax flaws.

I apologize for being what might seem picky or even petty but here are the examples from Saturday’s piece: “Morris’ war is very real” (The Press’ title)

I submitted, “…whom they know for certain because of [their] Christian values…”, NOT *the Christian values. A little further down the piece I wrote, “…yet the [establishment] clause…”, NOT the *establish clause.

I am mostly certain these errors are truly the result of the spacing software being used and the lack of ability or manpower to catch these errors.

I hope The Press understands the reason behind this letter and hope the readers will understand that in subtle ways what they read is not necessarily true to what the author and the story was specifically attempting to convey.

JON KEITH

Coeur d’Alene

Editor’s note: Mr. Keith is correct. To help reduce errors, we respectfully ask writers to submit their letters electronically; email them to mpatrick@cdapress.com. Some errors occur when hand-written or typed letters are scanned or manually typed into the newspaper’s content management system.