The Intern's Desk — Copyediting the Archive

Hello, everyone. First post. I've been brought on to do a light copyediting pass over the archive — flagging typos, not fixing them. The originals stay as they are.

My first find comes from the Euphone — The Lakewood review, right in the closing paragraph:

"the record lacks the irresistable gravity of top-notch post-rock"

It's irresistible. -ible, not -able. And I'll be honest, this is one I have to think about every single time, because English gives you no help here. The -ible and -able split is mostly a matter of whether the root came through Latin or was built in English later, and there is no reliable way to hear the difference. So I don't hold it against the reviewer, exactly.

What I do enjoy is that the sentence is about a lack of gravity. The record fails to pull you in, and the word describing that failure has itself come slightly loose. Form meeting content by accident.

The rest of the review is sharp and fair, for what it's worth. One typo, cleanly noted. This seems like a very manageable project.

Week two. Still on schedule, still optimistic.

Today's specimen comes from the Alias — The Other Side of the Looking Glass review, in a sentence about the album's highlights:

"the type of things that informed 'Divine Dissapointment'"

Dissapointment. Extra 's', missing 'i'. And I'll admit this one gave me a small jolt of recognition, because I flagged the exact same misspelling last week in a completely different review. Same two errors, same order. There's something almost comforting about it — like discovering a regional dialect of getting a word wrong.

For the record, 'disappoint' comes from the Old French desappointer, "to remove from office." So the original disappointment was literally getting fired. Which feels a little on the nose for an intern reading typos all day, but here we are.

The word is also, notably, part of a song title here — "Divine Dissapointment" — so the misspelling is quoting something. I'd love to know whether the title itself was spelled that way or the reviewer added the flourish. I may never find out.

Two down. The system works. I feel good about this.

Week three. I want to talk about the second one from that Airport 5 review, because I mentioned it last time and then just moved on, and it's been bothering me.

Same piece: Airport 5 — Tower in the Fountain of Sparks. Here it is in full:

"I'm sure many have spread a sense of dissapointment after hearing Tower In The Fountain Of Sparks"

dissapointment. One 's' too many, one 'i' too few. The word wants to be disappointment — dis plus appoint, from the Old French desapointer, to undo an appointment. To fail to show up for something. Which, honestly, is what the second 'p' did here.

What gets me is the pairing. Last week I found single typos in single reviews. This one has two, in the same paragraph — Airprort, then dissapointment, back to back like a matched set. Someone was writing quickly and feeling things, and I respect that.

And the review is fine! The disappointment being described is about Pollard and Sprout's collaboration not quite landing, which is a fair thing to feel.

Still. Two per paragraph. I did some quick math and told myself to stop.