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Election, what election?

Okay, we’ll admit it, every once in a while we mess up.

At least our readers are paying attention.

Okay, we’ll admit it, every once in a while we mess up. Sometimes it’s something minor like a typo, occasionally, it’s something bigger, a misspelled name or an error in a number — we’ll hear loudly and clearly about it from our readers — especially if it’s to do with tax rates.

One reporter in our office (okay it was me) once referred to a man named Geoffrey as Goofrey. Fortunately he was good-natured about the slip-up, but it’s one that haunts me to this day — Goofrey? Really? How dumb.

Misplaced apostrophes are the bane of an editor’s existence — an it’s instead of an its causes all kinds of confusion and raises readers’ ire.

A few years ago a spell check that changed the word colonel to colonial (an error that wasn’t caught by human eyes either) had one reader so irate that he suggested the offending reporter be hung from the yardarm (and he wasn’t kidding).

Sure, we could make excuses for the rare screw-up, and fortunately for us at the News Review, they are rare, but we’d rather just apologize and move on. There are plenty more typos where that came from and some of our minor mistakes give us something to chuckle about. We’re sure readers enjoy a laugh at our expense every once in a while too (except Geoff, perhaps). We just wish we had the cash to hire some of those eagle-eyed readers to proof read for us.

On to the point of this column. Thank you readers for pointing out our error in last Friday’s paper. Gary Lunn’s contact information was included in our almanac instead of Elizabeth May’s. And to answer your questions: No, it was not intentional. Yes, we are aware there was an election. And we do apologize for the error.

With luck that one won’t be repeated, but keep your keen eyes out for others, after all we’re not pefrect.