“It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong.” H. W. Longfellow
I always meant to remove a certain word from my spell checker, just in case, but in those days it took two men and a boy just to find the dictionary embedded in the software, so I waited until this happened:
My first day as news director for a local college, my boss, the Director of Public Relations (can you see where this is going?), took me around to the media outlets for introductions. At the newspaper office, she showed me a bulletin board – a wall of shame – covered with horrible news releases received from guys like me, badly written, funny typos, glaring inaccuracies. My boss, by words and glares of her own, impressed upon me the importance of never never never seeing our letterhead on that wall.
I’m generally pretty careful, but she frightened me into being extra careful. I checked and double-checked everything, until one day, a year or so later, when we were really busy, and I let something go out – some blurb about some insignificant thing – without double checking.
The release was fine, but I signed it under her name, Director of Pubic Relations.
Again, Julie, let me explain….
