Phonemes R Us

Over the weekend, I was covering a tech event in Lancaster, and talked with a fellow who was from out of the area. In passing, he mentioned that he was from Stanford. Which made perfect sense, it being a tech event.

Included a quote from him in the story, "said so-and-so, from Stanford." As it happened, he had an unusual spelling for his first name, so even though I'd CQ'd it, one of our copy editors jumped online to verify it. And what do you know? He didn't say "Stanford" after all. He's from Stamford, in Connecticut.

No big deal, since it was caught, but when you're identifying someone's home town, it sucks to miss by roughly 3,000 miles.

Have a care for us journalists, folks! If you're a computer science major from Amity University, rest assured we're going to think you mean the one in Cambridge, Mass., unless you do your part to make the difference clear.