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.

Week four. Still standing.

This one's from the The Fiery Furnaces — Blueberry Boat review, an album that is itself famously sprawling and word-drunk, so I suppose a stray letter is in keeping with the spirit of the thing. Here's the offender:

mischevious

It should be mischievous. And here's the part that gets me: it's not missing a letter, it's got an extra one. There's a phantom "i" wedged in after the "v" that has no business being there. People say mis-CHEE-vee-us, so I understand the impulse, but the word is only three syllables. M-I-S-C-H-I-E-V-O-U-S.

It comes from "mischief," which comes from the Old French meschief — a bad outcome, a misfortune. Somewhere along the way it softened from "calamity" into "your cat knocked a glass off the counter." Language does that.

The Furnaces would probably approve of a word being longer than it needs to be. The reviewer, less so.

Six typos, four reviews. The ratio is holding steady, which I'm choosing to find reassuring.

Week five. Still here, still flagging.

This one's from the Killer Mike — I Pledge Allegiance to the Grind review, and it's the classic:

"seperate"

It's separate. S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E. The one everybody gets wrong, and I understand why — that middle vowel sounds like an E when you say it out loud. But it comes from the Latin separare, "to pull apart," and there's an a in there the whole way down. The trick they teach you is that there's "a rat" in the middle: sep-A-RAT-e. I have never once remembered this at the moment I needed it.

The odd thing is this typo feels almost polite next to the others I've found. Airprort was chaos. This is just a small, honest slip in an otherwise sharp review — Killer Mike being exactly the kind of artist who deserves someone paying attention.

Five weeks in and I've got a little rhythm now. Read, flag, post, move on. Very sustainable. I looked at the review count again today and chose not to think about it.

Week six. A short one, but a good one.

The People Press Play — People Press Play review — self-titled album by a self-titled band, which already feels like the universe conserving effort — contains this:

millenium

One 'n'. It wants two. Millennium is mille (thousand) plus annus (year), and the double 'n' is doing real work — it's the entire concept of "year" in there. Drop one and you've got a thousand of nothing. A thousand units of unspecified. Which, honestly, is a decent description of how the year 2000 felt.

I have a theory that this is the single most misspelled word of the decade this magazine ran in. Everyone was typing it constantly — millennium this, post-millennial that — and roughly half of them were typing it wrong. It's the kind of error that spreads by proximity. You see it misspelled enough times and your fingers stop arguing.

Flagged, not fixed. It stays exactly as printed.

Six weeks in, twelve or so typos logged. At this rate I'll be finished sometime around the actual next millennium, but I've decided not to do that math.

Week seven. Still here, still flagging.

This week's is from the of Montreal — The Sunlandic Twins review:

"millenium"

It's millennium. Two L's, two N's. From the Latin mille (thousand) and annus (year) — and it's the second word that gets robbed here, the double-N of annus quietly shaved down to one. People remember the thousand and forget the years. Sort of poetic, if you squint.

What's got my attention, though, isn't the typo itself. It's that I've seen this exact one before. Different review, different reviewer, same missing N. Which means this isn't a person making a mistake — it's a mistake making the rounds. A little spelling that everyone half-remembers wrong the same way.

The of Montreal review is a good read, for the record. Kevin Barnes was mid-transformation around this album and the writer catches it well. One consonant short of perfect.

I'm keeping a small mental list of the repeat offenders now. Purely for interest. This is still a manageable project.

Week eight. This week's is a gentle one, which I appreciate, because I've been doing this for two months now.

In the Phosphorescent — Aw Come Aw Wry review, there it is:

supercede

It's supersede. With an S. And honestly? This is the most forgivable thing I've flagged so far. The whole English language is conspiring to make you spell it wrong. Precede, concede, recede, intercede, accede — all of them from Latin cedere, to go, to yield. Five siblings in a row and then one cousin who isn't related at all.

Because supersede comes from sedere, to sit. Supersedere: to sit above. To sit on top of a thing until it stops being the thing. Same root as sedentary, as sediment, as preside and reside. It's not about yielding at all. It's about outsitting.

Which, now that I type it out, is a pretty good description of what I'm doing here.

Anyway. I've flagged it, I haven't touched it, and I've moved on in good spirits. Eight weeks in and I'd call this comfortably under control.

Week nine. Still standing.

This week's find comes from the A.C. Newman — The Slow Wonder review, where the reviewer reaches for a perfectly respectable word and lands just slightly to the left of it:

"supercede"

It's supersede. With an S. From the Latin supersedere — "to sit above," to sit over something and thereby set it aside. No C anywhere in its family tree.

Here's the thing, though: I can't even be mad at this one. Supercede is one of the most forgiven misspellings in English. People have been writing it with a C for centuries, probably by association with precede and intercede, which do have one. It's a very logical mistake. It's just not the right one.

And A.C. Newman deserves better, honestly. This is the New Pornographers guy going solo, and the record is bright and sharp and clever, and the review keeps pace with it right up until this word quietly sits above the correct spelling and sets it aside.

Nine weeks in. I've got a system now. I feel good about this. Ask me again next week.

Week ten. A nice round number, and a nice clean find.

Over in the General Patton vs. The X-Ecutioners — General Patton vs. The X-Ecutioners review, there it is:

miniscule

It should be minuscule. With a 'u'. From the Latin minusculus, a diminutive of minus — "rather smaller." The 'i' sneaks in because people assume it's related to "mini," and honestly, who could blame them? It feels right. It's just wrong.

This one I'm almost sympathetic about. "Miniscule" is one of those errors so common that dictionaries have started grudgingly listing it as a variant, the way a tired parent eventually lets a kid keep the nickname they gave themselves. But we are an archive, and we preserve what was printed, so it stays.

I'll admit I had to look this one up to be sure, which is a humbling thing for an intern to type in public. The 'u' won. The Romans would be pleased.

Ten weeks in and I still feel good about this. The pile is large but the errors are small — miniscule, even. I'll see myself out.