Great adventures in proofreading was the subject matter of Benjamin Dreyer’s essay, “My Life in Error,” in the Sept. 25 New York Times Book Review. He wrote of the satisfaction of changing “lead” when the writer meant “led,” and the horror of finding a typo in a finished book he had proofed. I can relate. I do a lot of things, but mostly I am a proofreader and copy editor. More than once I have suffered the pain of publishing a typo on the IT cover. But it made me happy recently to fix a reference to former Illinois Gov. Louis Emerson, who, everybody from Mt. Vernon knows, is really Louis Emmerson. A woman who worked here met a relative of mine and spoke highly of me: “He really knows AP style.” My wife, on the other hand, can speak to the difficulties of living with someone who knows how to spell. The spouse of Benjamin Dreyer, who wrote the New York Times essay, tells him, kindly, “I think it must hurt to live in your brain.” –Fletcher Farrar, editor and CEO
COVER: Ukrainian refugee and University of Illinois Springfield freshman Ignat Striletskyi, left, and Montgomery County resident Chase Wilhelm display a Ukrainian flag in Springfield's Washington Park. Wilhelm, a state worker who also spends time at his wife's home in Springfield, traveled to the Polish border with Ukraine in March to drive Ukrainian refugees, including Striletskyi and his mother, to safety in other parts of Europe. PHOTO BY JOSH CATALANO
This article appears in A Ukrainian refugee at UIS.
