As the online producer at WBIR, I am in charge of making sure the writing in our online news stories is accurate. I try my best, but sometimes I mess up...like yesterday.
One of our reporters did a story on a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer who accidentally shot himself in the leg (I am happy to report that he is apparently going to make a full recovery).
When I edited that story yesterday, I thought it was weird that the officer's supervisor was quoted as saying that the accident happened while the cop was "re-moistening" his gun. But I figured, "Hey, I don't know much about guns. This must be some gun thing - like you have to wet them down periodically." So I left that (non) word in.
So today I had, like, 100 people call me to ask what the heck "re-moistening" a gun is. It turns out it was supposed to say "re-holstering," but when the reporter spellchecked her story before giving it to me to edit, the spellchecker changed it. And since I thought this was a gun thing, I left "re-moistening" in the story.
I felt pretty silly
1 comment:
Spell check is the beginning of the downfall of writers. Don't trust the spell check, Katie!
I'm the kind of person who would have HAD to find out what re-moistening meant before I put it in an article, too. :)
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