Holiday-scented potpourri

Craig Silverman's Regret the Error blog reports on corrections in journalism. I visit once in a while, but at year end, Craig notes what he considers the best of the year in whichever categories he deems necessary.

I read his annual wrap-up last night and I laughed so hard I was in tears. It was just one of those episodes where you can't stop laughing. Here are two examples of work that needed correcting:


I'd like to see Helen Mirren try that!

This one is pure anti-genius, from the kids at the Exponent, a student newspaper at Purdue University:


The Queen Elizabeth gaffe is a case of misuse of automated spell-check. This one shows why you need to be extra careful when you copy and paste text or use a template to maintain a style. Make sure you remove all the old text. Better yet, use stylesheets.

Bonus holiday treat tangentially related to screenwriting:

Industrial Light and Magic has a Web site that reveals in gory detail how the company produced the special effects for "Pirates of the Caribbean 2". It's heavy duty Flash, but fantastic.

And you learn that Davy Jones has exactly 46 tentacles on his face.