We received a handful of entries, though, some of which were quite entertaining. Angela Orlando wrote in and pointed out three errors--mistakes she found before she read about the contest.
"Hard as it is to resist, I am not going to spend any time seeking more without being on your payroll, at least part time," she said.
Simon Horness e-mailed and pointed out a typo in my editor's note--I wrote "let is know" instead of "let us know."
"I bet you purposely did this to catch our attention," Simon said. "I spotted it way before learning about the prize."
Um, yeah. I meant to have that typo there. (I wish.)
Beyond the handful of entries, there was a fair amount of feedback on the contest. Several folks--like Angela--called or wrote looking for work, asking if we were hiring proofreaders. (At this point, we're not.) Several folks derided me for being thin-skinned about typos, even though I didn't mean to come across like that. (If I was being thin-skinned, would I invite more abuse?)
In any case, the hands-down winner of the contest was Bruce Prince. He e-mailed, claiming to have found 79 errors. Most of them were style differences and comma beefs that weren't actually mistakes. However, 30 of his findings were honest-to-goodness screw-ups. (Seeing as that was an 88-page paper, that equates to just more than one error every three pages.)
I called Bruce, who was happy to hear he'd won. He said he entered because he's long been irritated by errors in newspapers--especially the Arizona Daily Star. The confusion of its and it's is one of his pet peeves.
"It makes me wonder sometimes--do these people even have proofreaders?" he asked.
He said that his friends often tease him about his irritation over typos and errors, so he decided to show them by scanning The Weekly until "blurry-eyed."
Well, you did show them. Congrats, Bruce. He'll be receiving a gift certificate to a restaurant or a bookstore for his efforts.
