Politis Pointer #3: Misspellings by Journalists?

The Politis Pointer below was originally published on July 8, 2006 on DavidPolitis.com. It is re-purposed below with minor edits.

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So what should you do if you find your name (or your company name or a product/service name) misspelled in an article or editorial?

Simple, tell the author. That’s it? Yeah, that’s it.

Perhaps you would write something like the following:

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Dear Firstname:

Thank you for writing about our company in the XX/XX/XX edition of XYZMagazine in the article entitled “Insert article title here.” (NOTE: You might even insert the URL to the article here too.)

{Write a quick sentence of appreciation here, perhaps about something you liked in the article, such as how the author described your product or company. Regardless, this should be a positive note of one or two sentences — no more. Then you point out the misspelling.}

However, I thought you’d like to know that the correct spelling for our company name is {insert correct spelling here}, not {insert name here as misspelled in the article/editorial} as found in {insert the number of the paragraph where the misspelled name first appeared}.

Anyway, thank you again for writing about our company.

Sincerely,

Your name goes here

P.S. One more thing. If it would be possible to correct the misspelled name in the online article that would be great. Thanks.

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Although it was more than 25 years ago when I took my first journalism class, I know that professors still drill their journalism students with the mantra of, “Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy.” And misspelling the name of a company, product, service or person is one of the simplest of mistakes a journalist can make.

TIP:

Luckily, fixing a misspelled word is pretty easy to do, and most journalists are more than happy to do so . . . IF you ask nicely.

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