Newspaper publishes wrong verb tense on front page

by William Jackson on 2006-09-13

Image: The Daily Texan, grammatically challenged

Classes continued normally at the University of Texas yesterday asanother issue of The Daily Texan was released. Many students wereunaware as they perused the newspaper that they were holding a piece ofjournalistic literature with a flagrant grammatical error on the cover.

“Student protesters questions attacks” read that dayʼs front-pageheadline. This discrepancy was discovered by Computer Science seniorWilliam Jackson.

“I donʼt usually pick up the paper, because I donʼt have a birdcage Ihave to keep lined. I got it today because I was planning on doing somefinger-painting later tonight,” Jackson explained. “I donʼt want to getfinger paint all over my carpet.”

Jackson continued, “I wasnʼt even going to read it, but the letters wereso big, the error so blatant, I couldnʼt help but notice.”

The Daily Texan has a long history: it was first published in 1900 andhas been serving the University of Texas at Austin since then. Jacksonhas had access to the paper since 2000 when he first came to theUniversity.

“I never really liked the Texan,” Jackson explained. “What are there,like nine different fonts on the front page alone? It hurts my eyes justto look at it. As far as the grammar is concerned, this is just the kindof journalistic quality I have come to expect from this newspaper.”

Jackson recalled another incident that left him questioning thereliability of the Texan. “I remember another headline from a whileback. It said something like, ‘Montoya says adios, thatʼs Spanish forgoodbye’. Seriously, is that supposed to be funny? Who doesnʼt know thatalready?”

In defense of the newspaper, the online edition either did not fallvictim to the same error, or it was promptly changed upon discovery.

“This is a real blow to my school pride.” Jackson concluded. “I thoughtthere were some tests you had to pass to get accepted to UT. Iʼmconsidering applying to be a proofreader for the Texan so I can do mypart to keep this kind of humiliation to a minimum.”