BYU Student Error Causes Paper Recall
Learn to spell, Mormon
Jesus and his 12 apostates, prostates, posthaste, a postman, apostles.
This is why relying on a spellchecker’s auto-correct function is a bad idea. 18,500 copies of The Daily Universe, the student newspaper for Brigham Young University, a Mormon university, had to be recalled Monday after it went to print with a potentially embarrassing error. It seems a student journalist mistyped the word “apostle” when captioning a photo and the program auto-corrected the word to “apostate.” According to the apology subsequently printed in the corrected edition, the mistake went down like so.
“A spelling error appeared in a photo caption in which the word ‘apostle’ was rendered as ‘apostate.’ In referring to activities at the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last weekend, the caption read in part, ‘Members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostates and other general authorities raise their hands in a sustaining vote. . .”
On second thought, if the auto-correct function leads student journalists to accidentally call their church elders apostates, I’m its biggest advocate, because that is comedy gold. You can’t make this stuff up. Although, apparently spellcheck can.