Hockey -- Fatals

Sorry to say two people fataled on this one. In both cases, it was the same culprit: the spelling of names.

The thing about these fatals that DOESN'T surprise me is who made 'em: they were two of the better-performing students in this class.

So, why is that not surprising?

Because it's a reminder that fatals can happen to anybody if they fail to do the basics of fact-checking in a rigorous and systematic way.

Fatals have nothing to do with talent and ability. Fatals have everything to do with the boring basic mechanical drudgery of checking things against other things and making sure you are correct.

Those procedures can never be skipped, no matter how good you get. It's why The New Yor Times has the best journalists in the world, yet they still have a copy desk to ferret out missteps.

Checking your work (and assuming nothing) to make sure you're correct is just like working out to make sure you're in shape: no matter how in-shape you are, the moment you decide that your routine workout is unnecessary is when you backslide and have to start from scratch.

Both of the fatals in this assignment involve things that could have been easily caught, with proper due diligence.

In one case, you misspelled the last name of board member Jane Tribitt, which you spelled correctly two references but as Tribett in the third. This one was completely catchable if you did your due diligence in double-checking every name, asserion, quote, figure, statistic, ect. after you finished writing.

The fact that you had one last name spelled two different ways would have been a sure tip that at least one of those ways was wrong.

Another person misspelled the first name of Stuard Adler as Stuart Adler. And that leads to another problem: the fact that the information regarding what an Adler had to say wasn't clear on which Adler was talking. Here's the passage:

Sandra Adler is a parent whose daughter was a senior on last year's team along with the four boys. Adler also was an all-state consensus pick as player of the year during her senior year on the girls' field hockey team thirty years ago. Her husband is Stuard Adler, minister of the Church of Christ. "I just don't think it is healthy mentally or physically to have theg boys and girls playing on the same team ... "

Nowhere were you told which Adler was speaking. Many of you made an assumption that I decided not to fatal. That was the wrong thing to do. What should you have done?