You say 'teat', I say 'peat'...

Recently I was subbing a news story about a major drugs bust, in which 684kg of cocaine was discovered on a truck headed from Spain to England. The raw copy contained the following paragraph:

The drugs were found in plastic bags packed around cash registers and under piles of teat. A regional customs spokesman says: “It’s the biggest haul of cocaine ever seized in mainland France.”

I asked the writer of the story what 'teat' was. She said it was like soil. I asked her if she meant 'peat'. She said, no, 'teat'. She then looked up 'teat' in the dictionary just to check. It turned out she had meant 'peat'.

If 'teat' had made it into press, we would have both looked like tits.

Pseudo-indecent photographs

Today's picture is again a BBC News screengrab, this time from an article. I've highlighted the phrase of interest.


I'm sure that's supposed to read 'indecent pseudo-photographs'...

Shadow climate change and Jim Fitzpatrick MP

A bit of a strange one here, from the Department for Transport website (you may have to click on the image to see a larger version):


Why does Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, have responsibility for "shadow climate change"? As a Labour MP he is a member of the government, not the shadow government.

Is this just a daft mistake, or am I missing something? Perhaps it is Fitzpatrick's responsibility to keep tabs on the shadow climate change secretary, Greg Clark.

Whatever, there's definitely something shadowy going on.

Too many Washingtons

I had to change a live web story today because it described a certain UK-based company as being "US-based". The writer had seen on the company's website that its headquarters were in Washington and he assumed that meant Washington DC (or Washington state, I suppose).

In fact, the company is based in - you guessed it - Washington, Tyne and Wear, right here in England.

I can't really criticise the writer, though, because I was the sub who worked on the story before it went live and let the blunder past. Oops.

A common subbing pitfall as shown by the BBC

You may have to take my word for it (unless you click on the screengrab to see a larger version), but the fourth and eighth pars of the BBC News story shown over on the right are identical.

Both pars read: "Pipistrelle, a smaller animal, is among the few species found on the isles."

I'm blogging about this not to mock the BBC but to highlight a common pitfall for busy subs – only completing the first step of a two-step operation.

I have no way of proving it, but I imagine this is what happened in this particular case:

While working on the story, a sub decided to move the 'Pipistrelle...' par. He* completed the first stage of the operation, copying the par and pasting it in a new location. But he was then distracted and failed to complete the second stage, namely deleting the par from its original position.

Anything could have distracted him: an urgent phone call, a crisis meeting, a breaking story, a box of mince pies in the far corner of the office. I speak from experience...

Oh, and here's the link to the BBC News page so you can check whether the story has been fixed yet:

Bat 'may have been blown' from US

UPDATE 13/12: The BBC story has indeed been changed - now it's the third and eighth pars that are identical.


*Yes, I know, I haven't used singular 'they'. Please don't flame me.