This morning, I "opened" the local paper to this article. The article then prompted me to write the editor of the Chico ER. Here is what I said:
Subject: Pedal vs. Peddle
Dear Editor,
This is in response to the following article that covered the Chico Wildflower:
http://www.chicoer.com/newshome/ci_5730070
Your staff writer, Sarah Kingsbury, made the embarrassing mistake of using the word "peddle" in every instance that she should have used "pedal."
One does not peddle a bicycle, unless that person is in business to sell bicycles. If a person is on a bicycle, he has his feet on the pedals, and is therefore pedaling.
Edit your news! The Wildflower is Chico's largest event of the year, and this article represents our town. With writing of this caliber, people will think that Chico's journalists do not know how to write.
Sincerely,
Gino Zahnd
Chico, CA
Perhaps the Chico ER will hire me to cover the Wildflower story next year. I have a journalism degree from a highly acclaimed journalism school, and I can certainly write more compelling cycling stories than this.
Update: The Editor wrote me back.
Yes, you are correct. The writer and copy editor on Sunday have already been reprimanded.
David Little, editor
Chico Enterprise-Record
400 E. Park Ave.
Chico, CA 95928
6 comments:
You could pen upon the perponderance of petalers pedaling flower peddles as the bike petalers peddled past. :)
Phil, I think you meant preponderance. :-p
Considering the ride is called the "Wildflower" I would have thought they might confuse petals and pedals while getting all word-smithy on us, but peddles?
I can highly recommend using Firefox 2.x, if not for it's elegant design, at least for the inline spell check in any text box (for Phil, there's no helping the folks at the ER). Plus, all the cool kids are doing it!
The article mentioned the cost of the Wildflower being $250,000, wow! I figured the Wildflower would be a fund raiser for the club. Makes me wonder how they make ends meet.
Oh and Gino, there's no doubt you could add some style and eloquence to any article found in the ER.
this is an exceedingly common mistake.
i tend to blame these sorts of spelling errors on the MS word spellcheck feature
Dear Anonymous (coward),
Surely you are joking. Why shift the blame from the person who made the mistake to a piece of software?
I imagine that you work at the Chico ER, or are you actually the shamed author of the article in question?
The story quality matched the photo quality. I guess we might claim to be pleased that the weekend crew is at least consistent.
But at least the Wildflower itself was a delightful ride. Even the weather cooperated.
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