I just picked up a copy of the December MR. I canceled my subscription last year because I felt the magazine’s quality had slipped and that it had become “dumbed down,” but, from time to time, I check to see if the situation’s been rectified.
Given that a major contributor this hobby’s name was misspelled “Chronkite,” and by a long-time editor, no less, I see this is not the case.
Midnight, your note is not addressed to me, but you have posted it in a public forum. If I were Andy, I’d be quite put out by your approach, making it a public disapproval rather than contacting him privately.
Seems a lot like posturing to me. I say this in the same public forum that you have used, and just as publicly, to let you know how I feel about your method. Hopefully I have made my point?
-Crandell
Does this mean Andy Sper - Spor - whatever is human?
Typo’s are always easy to find by critics after the fact, as a simple club magazine editor, believe me, I know, and I am only on a club level!
Teditor.
MR you may have opened a larger can of worms than you wanted, or maybe not. Taking a public pot shot at a popular person can be misunderstood as mean spirited, or maybe not misunderstood. And you are not even a subscriber to the magazine.
I suggest you post some pics of your layout, share some ideas on how to make better trees and leave the magazine editing to those who publish it and subscribe to it.
Actually didn’t realise, but Midnight Railroader is using the initials of the magazine he is bagging, time for a new identity.
Teditor.
…any more. I subscribed for over 30 years, which ought to stand for something.
All this over simply mispelling someones name?
Sheesh if I counted all the times I misspelled something…[:-^]
Your point is made.
I don’t get this–excusing a paid, professional magazine’s unwillingness to get the very basics right.
Have our standards dropped that much?
I just look at it this way, if he mispelled it 3 times, he must have honestly thought he was spelling it correctly, even if he wasnt, it wasnt intentional, so I’d be willing to let it slide, I cant tell you how many times I’ve unintentionally butchered people and place names, its sometimes very hard to get some one name right when they are one or two letters different from the most common spelling of a name, thats why I would let it slide this time.
Midnight,
Glad to see you tamed down your posting, but I wish you had just written directly to Mr. Sperandeo.
I’ve been a reader/subscriber to MR since Dec. 1955. I also subscribe to other train mags, but consider MR to almost consistently be the best.
As a retired financial analyst from a major oil company, I have written many documents that ended up in the hands of lots of high level folks. I know first hand that you will make “spelling errors”, but I was never chastised for them as you did in your original posting.
Mr. Sperandeo is one of my MR heroes, and I am certain that he did not err in the spelling of the gentleman’s name on purpose. Of course no one wants to see their name misspelled, and I am sure Andy understands that more than most folks. He, or the proofreaders or whoever, made an error.
Mobilman44
This the heart of my complaint. Here we have a writer who simply guessed at the spelling of a name, didn’t bother to check it, and no one else on the staff took the time either. The MR of old wouldn’t have allowed that kind of sloppiness. These people get paid–it’s a job. We ought to expect a quality product, whether we subscribe or buy a copy off the stand.
I just want “my” old Model Railroader back–the one that taught me much of what I know about this hobby.
One of the problems with typos these days is that they have a very insidious way of hanging around no matter what one tries to do about them. I’ve noticed them appearing more and more in newspapers, magazines and–yes, actual published books. I have a wonderful book on Rio Grande steam locomotives by Robert LaMessina, an author that I’ve always enjoyed, and the book is absolutely RIFE with typos. Not factual errors, but simple spelling errors that are pretty easy to do, if one is using a computer keyboard and working fast–God knows I’VE done my share–and with the speed at which things have to be turned out in this day and age, it seems harder and harder for a proof-reader to catch them all.
I hate to say it, but typos are fast becoming more and more, a product of our rapid technology. For myself, I’ve sort of learned to ignore them. Lord knows I’ve even had my share of them in some of the school memos that have come out from time to time–I’ve got two very simple names–Tom White–but you’d be amazed at some of the variations that have come out–‘Bob’ White being frequent. However the best one was “Tod Whytte.” I was so intrigued by how they came up with THAT one that I almost ADOPTED it, LOL!
Tom [:P]
Well, you better not mis-spell my name, Louis Robert Van Hentenryck Sr.!![:-^]
In my former life (pre-retirement) I often wrote for “scholarly” journals; they would send me proof sheets that I would proof read and correct; I would send it back to them, and the mistakes would still make it into print. I know someone who’s article in a professional publication was printed with the credit to another author entirely.
But I also worked in the graphic arts (printing industry) and was responsible for publishing error-free publications, and I can tell you it is almost impossible to do.
I’ve had my name spelled incorrectly so many times I don’t much think about it anymore, unless its on a check! [:)]
Midnight, thanks. I hope you understand that I respect you. It was just your method. I have no opinion on your beef, as unfortunate as it is. I’m sure Andy is mortified…if he now understands his error. He deserved more credit in my opinion.
-Crandell
It is my belief that without the modern addition of spell checkers on our computers I would be writing from a random pile of letters that would only by chance happen to fall into the correct order to form a word or sentence that could convey any meaning to the reader at all. [D)][|)][zzz][sigh][:I]
Bruce
I believe this quoted sentence should read:
IT INDEED APPEARS, SIR, THAT YOUR SYNTAX IS NO BETTER THAN HIS SPELLING!
True, and were I writing this for pay as part of my job, I’d expect to be taken to task for it.
Since I am not, however, the circumstances are very different.
Most publications have people - copy editors and proofreaders and such - who are supposed to catch and correct things like name misspellings before they get into print. The editor may have misspelled someone’s name, but not catching it means someone else failed to do their job.
This, along with other errors I’ve noticed in the past few years in MR and other Kalmbach publications, simply shows that Kalmbach has cut their quality assurance department too much.