Stand-Up Proofreading

There are a lot of humiliating spelling blunders that go beyond small mistakes to become hilarious screw-ups, like many newspaper journalists' worst nightmare: leaving out the 'l' in "public" so it becomes "pubic". (Watch out for that one, public relations students!)

But it would be a lot more embarrassing to be foiled by a proofreading error as a broadcast journalist reading from a script you didn't write!

At least in print, you can hide behind a shield of anonymity. No one can look right at your face and laugh out loud directly at you when they read your typos (unless you're my Dad — he liked to point those out to me when he came across them in the Brandon Sun).

But if I read a typo on the air (like pubic instead of public), I would immediately realize my mistake, go beat red, lose my place on the teleprompter and crumble into a puddle of humiliation. Much worse than a little news print!

Check out Taylor Mali's hilarious "The The Impotence of Proofreading" spoken bit that plays on some mistakes that are funnier when read aloud.