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Bird On The Wire
an online column by Carmel Bird

No. 9
21 August 1998

Previous columns

The future of the book

Time Slices

Outside In

The Tried and Tested

The Man Behind The Woman

Uncorrected Proof

Stories My Mother Should Have Told Me

Playing Heidi
If you use what is known as snail mail, receiving letters at what is called your street address, you may sometimes get a letter with inaccurate details on the envelope. Because the people at the local post office are sometimes alert, poorly addressed letters can still reach you. But if you want to reach someone by email, or check out something on the Net, you have to get every last dot absolutely right.
It is a long time since newspapers checked facts before printing them. So it is to be expected that they will publish email addresses and URLs inaccurately from time to time. You get used to it. The stuff in newspapers represents a little grey parallel universe that runs alongside the things that happen in the world. Just ever so slightly different. But emails and URLs are not so hard; we learnt to do phone numbers and PIN numbers OK.
I have two recent personal examples of these little errors, and since they concern matters electronic, I will note them. Last Saturday there was a piece in one of the major weekend papers about Australian writers and the Net. My URL was wrong. A couple of weeks ago another paper claimed that on my site I have posted ‘extracts from the Stolen Children report’. Never would I do such a thing. (By the way the report is called Bringing Them Home. ) I have edited a book that includes extracts from the report, and I have posted my Introduction to my book on my site. That’s all. I have no authority to go putting bits of the report on my site. The claim of the newspaper was very misleading, and could cause confusion and trouble with the copyright holders of the material in the report.
My book Automatic Teller is regularly written up as The Automatic Teller Machine. Matthew Condon did not write a book called Pillow Talk, as was said in last Saturday’s paper. He wrote Pillow Fight. Marion Halligan wrote The Golden Dress, not The Gold Dress. I wrote Not Now Jack -- I’m Writing a Novel not Not Now Harry -- I’m Writing a Book. I wrote Dear Writer not Dear Water. You’d think they’d get the titles right.
These are only a few small examples, but many such small things add up to a sum of carelessness. They are not ordinary typos. They are things that might as well be right as wrong. And if so much is slightly wrong, how can we know how much is right?
You go to writers’ festivals and there’s always a session on the difference between writing fact and writing fiction. Perhaps in the case of newspapers the difference is much less significant than we imagine.

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Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.


	Bird On The Wire an online column by Carmel Bird No. 9 21 August 1998
Previous columns The future of the book Time Slices Outside In The Tried and Tested The Man Behind The Woman Uncorrected Proof Stories My Mother Should Have Told Me Playing Heidi	If you use what is known as snail mail, receiving letters at what is called your street address, you may sometimes get a letter with inaccurate details on the envelope. Because the people at the local post office are sometimes alert, poorly addressed letters can still reach you. But if you want to reach someone by email, or check out something on the Net, you have to get every last dot absolutely right. It is a long time since newspapers checked facts before printing them. So it is to be expected that they will publish email addresses and URLs inaccurately from time to time. You get used to it. The stuff in newspapers represents a little grey parallel universe that runs alongside the things that happen in the world. Just ever so slightly different. But emails and URLs are not so hard; we learnt to do phone numbers and PIN numbers OK. I have two recent personal examples of these little errors, and since they concern matters electronic, I will note them. Last Saturday there was a piece in one of the major weekend papers about Australian writers and the Net. My URL was wrong. A couple of weeks ago another paper claimed that on my site I have posted ‘extracts from the Stolen Children report’. Never would I do such a thing. (By the way the report is called Bringing Them Home. ) I have edited a book that includes extracts from the report, and I have posted my Introduction to my book on my site. That’s all. I have no authority to go putting bits of the report on my site. The claim of the newspaper was very misleading, and could cause confusion and trouble with the copyright holders of the material in the report. My book Automatic Teller is regularly written up as The Automatic Teller Machine. Matthew Condon did not write a book called Pillow Talk, as was said in last Saturday’s paper. He wrote Pillow Fight. Marion Halligan wrote The Golden Dress, not The Gold Dress. I wrote Not Now Jack -- I’m Writing a Novel not Not Now Harry -- I’m Writing a Book. I wrote Dear Writer not Dear Water. You’d think they’d get the titles right. These are only a few small examples, but many such small things add up to a sum of carelessness. They are not ordinary typos. They are things that might as well be right as wrong. And if so much is slightly wrong, how can we know how much is right? You go to writers’ festivals and there’s always a session on the difference between writing fact and writing fiction. Perhaps in the case of newspapers the difference is much less significant than we imagine.


HOME	Copyright © Carmel Bird 1998. All rights reserved.