15 Embarrassing (But Very Funny) Corrections in Major Newspapers

Amber Garrett - Author
By

Updated Jan. 30 2020, 1:46 p.m. ET

newspaper corrections
Source: 20TH CENTURY FOX/DREAMWORKS

Newspaper editors strive to make sure stories are free of factual, spelling, and grammatical errors. However, being humans operating under tight deadlines, they don't always get everything right. Errors that seem glaring and obvious to readers can sometimes escape a busy editor's notice even in at venerated papers of record like the New York Times and Washington Post. When this happens, editors must face the music and issue corrections or retractions, no matter how much they'd probably like to say nothing and hope nobody noticed.

These 15 mortifying but very funny newspaper corrections prove pobody's nerfect.

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Pride and Prejudice and Vampires?

I'm guessing the editor of this story had a rough night, based on the number of errors. The first two are pretty understandable typos, but it's hard to forgive mistaking Gothic horror writer Bram Stoker with the OG of chick lit, Jane Austen. Would love to read a mashup where Elizabeth Bennet has a secret life as a vampire hunter, though!

What a difference a letter makes.

Social media managers have to be extra careful about what they tweet since there's (still, after 13 years) no way to correct a tweet once it's published. This very unfortunate copy-paste error had The Washington Post seemingly calling a dancer with one arm a "ho."

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Funkiest rebellion ever.

Carolyn Ryan is Assistant Managing Editor of the New York Times, and there is somewhat of a rivalry between her paper and the Post. Nevertheless, people in glass houses, Carolyn! I'd argue that messing up John Brown's first name isn't nearly as bad as confusing Bram Stoker with Jane Austen.

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Fact-checking is magic!

Clearly, the editors at the New York Times are not bronies, because Twilight Sparkle, a lavender Alicorn with both Pegasus wings and a horn, could never be confused with the butter-yellow Pegasus Pony Fluttershy.

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That's *Captain* Thickset to you.

I can just imagine the email that triggered this retraction. "Excuse me, but do you even lift? You don't see too many 'thickset' guys passing  the Navy Physical Readiness Test, buddy."

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Either way, he's a good boy.

While both breeds have similar coloring, anyone who's seen the Netflix cartoon knows Mr. Peanutbutter's hyper temperament is way more like a lab than a golden!

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Speaking of good boys...

It seems the Times has some real trouble distinguishing between these two breeds! It seems like maybe they need to add an AKC specific appendix to the style guide.

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Proofin' ain't easy.

The actual title of the category is clearly a play on the latter, so it's an understandable mistake. Still, you gotta love when a paper as serious as The New York Times can have a sense of humor about itself.

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I have a couple questions...

My first question is, why does this browser extension exist? My follow-up is, what else does it change? So far as I can tell, aside from  making it so every instance of the word millennial is changed to "Snake People," it also appears to alter mentions of "Generation Y" to "Serpent Society" and, somewhat randomly, replaces "The Great Recession" with "the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks." Having graduated college during that period... this isn't too far off from how it felt, TBH.

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At least they got the number of "i"s right.

Make a note of it. There are six "i"s when you sing or write "hello from the other siiiiiide" — no more, no less.

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That's a self-Ginsburn!

Kate McKinnon is a gifted impressionist, but she usually doesn't perform her Ruth Bader Ginsberg impression outside of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. How wild would it be if she were to appear as RBG playing another character in an opera, though!?

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I honestly thought I remembered a top hat, too.

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen this 40-year-old film, but this is definitely one of the more disturbing images in it. While journalists shy away from editorializing adjectives outside of the opinion pages, the guy with the man in the bear suit is, indeed, objectively weird — though one could argue the guy in the bear suit is weirder.

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Misheard Torah

The Israeli prime minister is referring to a passage in Numbers, wherein Moses talks to a rock in the Desert of Zin and commands it to pour water, saving the people of Kadesh from a deadly drought. While slightly less impressive, it would be nearly as miraculous to transport water from Iraq to Israel at that time, too.

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We're RORYS

When I used to have a newspaper subscription, the crossword, sudoku, and Jumble puzzles were a real treat, so I can imagine this omission was quite upsetting for some subscribers. It was nice of the Dallas Morning News to include an extra Jumble in their correction.

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What did *you* think they meant, gutterbrain?

There's no way they thought the item on the left would be interpreted as thanks for a holiday shopping spree, right? Nobody is that innocent anymore... are they? I don't know about George's relationship status, but for the brief moment this item ran, it was either very bad for his personal life or very, very good.

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