Posted on: Sunday, May 27, 2001

After Deadline
Misspelling slipped through the cracks

By Jim Kelly
Advertiser Executive Editor

Mistakes are bad enough wherever they appear in the newspaper. But when they're in the dominant news story on the front page it's enough to ruin an editor's day.

Last Wednesday, we published a story by Leeward correspondent James Gonser on the impending closure of an 81-year-old neighborhood store, Honouliuli Shokai on Fort Weaver Road. The story and two photographs were given prominent display on the front page.

Gonser, a reliable and diligent reporter, made a mistake and transposed two letters when typing the name of the store, writing "shoaki" instead of "shokai," a loosely translated Japanese word that came to mean "company" or "store" to older generations in Hawai'i. The transposition occurred only in the first paragraph of the story; a subsequent reference was spelled correctly. Photographer Jeff Widener also spelled "shokai" correctly in his caption information.

When the story arrived at the city desk, an editor introduced the misspelled "shoaki" into another paragraph. Once it had been sent to the copy desk, an editor noticed the inconsistency. The copy desk is where all stories ultimately end up to be checked for clarity, accuracy and correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. Copy editors also write headlines and photo captions.

Catching the inconsistency was a great first step. The problem was, the editor assumed since "shoaki" appeared twice in the text as well as on an accompanying locater map, and "shokai" appeared only once, that the former was the correct spelling. The editor changed the text, then wrote a headline and a caption based on that bad assumption.

The result was an embarrassing gaffe that dominated the front page of more than 130,000 morning editions of The Advertiser. (The mistake was repaired for our PM edition).

Gonser said: "I feel really bad about the error because it took away from the story and therefore from the family. I feel like I hurt them personally. How can a reader trust the accuracy of a story when even the name of the store is wrong?"

Indeed, we received more than a dozen calls from readers, most of them wondering the same thing: Don't you people proofread the paper?

But several also asked a more pointed question. If you had more local people on the staff, such mistakes wouldn't be made. Wouldn't an editor born and raised here know how to spell "shokai?"

That's an easy generalization to make but like most generalizations, it gets a little wobbly when you lean on it.

We have a terrific staff with a lot of dedicated people from a variety of backgrounds. Some were born and raised in Hawai'i, others have lived here for many years and some are relative newcomers. Reporters and editors who are local or with many years in Hawai'i pick up on misspellings or bum geography or imprecise history. And journalists from elsewhere sometimes ask for crucial background information on local stories that others assume everyone knows.

With that mix, it's pretty rare for a piece of copy to come through that's been written, edited and laid out exclusively by either kama'aina or malihini. In the case of Gonser's story, it was seen by at least six people, including two lifelong Hawai'i residents and another who is conversant in Japanese.

The bottom line on the Honouliuli Shokai tale is that a typing error not only wasn't caught but was actually exacerbated by a combination of inattention, mistaken assumptions and deadline pressure.

We simply messed up. It was a humbling experience and one from which we will learn.

On any given day, copy editors repair scores of mistakes, ranging from an erroneous political party designation in a story about Congress from the Washington Post to a misplaced 'okina in the name of a high school on the sports page.

Just the other night, a copy editor caught a reference in a long list to a "Wai'alae" Beach Park on the Leeward Coast. Sure enough, it was supposed to be Wai'anae.

But you don't see the mistakes we catch. Only the ones that slip through.

As for Gonser, (who has lived here since 1977, by the way), he grabbed a bundle of the corrected PM editions of The Advertiser last Wednesday and brought them out to the Murata family as a way of apologizing.

"It is not the lack of being local that caused the mistake," Gonser said. "It was a failure of being careful."