Where Have All the Copy Editors Gone?

I was innocently reading the paper today, and stumbled across this in an Associated Press story:

"The butter industry is taking the same tact (sic), with a holiday ad urging consumers to 'Unwrap the natural flavor of real butter for holiday entertaining.'"

That's right up there with that other commonly misthought and miswritten phrase, "honing in" (rather than the correct "homing in").

But to top both of these very common (but perhaps understandable) examples of bad copy editing, try this one, from the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Back in September, just after the severe flooding in southeastern Minnesota, the PiPress ran a story about a fund set up to help out farmers whose crops were destroyed. I already knew about the fund, which is called the "Sow the Seeds Fund." The story, however, referred to it at least three times as the "Sew the Seeds Fund."

As we all suspected, a few too many people took the buyout at the Pioneer Press.