The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate
“Correction: Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in 2005, not 1995, as an earlier draft of this article stated.”–headline, Washington Post website, April 21
Breaking News From 1960
“U.S. Conducts Spy Flight Over Russia”–headline, Washington Free Beacon, April 21
Carlos Pardo helped create the ‘It’s Colombia, Not Columbia’ campaign.
What’ll the Venezoowaylans Do?
Columbia is the name of a university, an encyclopedia, America’s federal district and the westernmost province of British Canada. The homonymous South American country uses the Spanish spelling, Colombia, and some Colombians bristle when Anglophones misspell it, as The Wall Street Journal reports;
“Just landed in Columbia. On my way to the hotel,” Paris Hilton tweeted last year as her plane touched down in Bogotá for the opening of one of her handbag shops.
But before she left the airport, there were scores of replies like this: “PARIS, IT’S COLOMBIA, NOT COLUMBIA!!!!” The celebrity great-granddaughter of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton soon corrected her tweet. . . .
Now, tens of thousands of Colombians are fighting back by linking up with a movement called “It’s Colombia, NOT Columbia.”
Great idea, except that (1) the exhortation, when spoken, sounds exactly like “It’s Columbia, NOT Colombia,” and (2) even when written, it repeats the wrong spelling, thereby embedding it deeper in the reader’s mind. May we suggest “It’s Colombia–with an O!”?
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
