Climate change - can you catch the typo?

"The annual rise of 17 billion tons [of atmospheric carbon] translates into a rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  Each additional 7.8 billion tons is equivalent to one part per million in the atmosphere, so that an extra 17 tons each year is equivalent to a rise of roughly two parts per million."
- Common Wealth, p. 92, Jeffrey D. Sachs

Hint: The word "billion" is missing in one place.

Hint: If the amount of carbon dioxide needed to add 2ppm is what he wrote, then the earth would have become a desert already.

The moral: Once you proofread something you wrote, proofread it again.  I caught at least one in what I typed above!

Cutting costs can raise costs

Many newspapers have cut costs by reducing staff, including copy editors. One of the major jobs of a copy editor is to proofread. I am finding more and more errors in newspapers.

Last week I found two 2's in the same sudoku square and another square where it would be impossible to put a two. In another issue I found "covert" as a verb instead of convert. And I've found many a truncated article.

These errors can raise costs in many ways. A couple I can think of are staff to read the complaints in email and the people who stop reading.

Well, I never make misteaks. (And sometimes spell checkers don't let me.) Somday I'll proof it to yuo.

Paraphrase of the day – error

Chuck Frederick, the opinion page editor of the Duluth News Tribune, and I have been exchanging email with the ever-changing text of a Local View I submitted.  I hope my latest email is the final version.  I finished that message with:

"Who knows what [error] lurks in the [arts] of men.  The Shadow knows."