Dreaded, but really funny, typo

There are some things that, as a copy editor, you dread seeing coming across the wire. Some are tragic, like obit notices (most notably, the tense wait for word on Dale Earnhardt after the 2001 Daytona 500). Some just mean the night’s going to get a little more exciting, like the obligatory notice the Associated Press sends out when a no-hitter passes the six-inning mark (meaning that your nice, nifty layout you’ve had set since 4:30 p.m. may or may not be changing 10 minutes before deadline.)

And then there are ones that are just damn funny.

The Australian Open is a weird tennis tournament for American media, because matches start at about 9 p.m. EST and run through about 7 a.m. EST. This means that writers filing stories for American papers and the Associated Press will file a first story about 10:30 p.m. and then update it for several hours. They will file a final story for the day at the end of the day’s play. It leaves editors in a strange position of running – and sometimes rerunning – two days worth of results.

Well, Lindsey Davenport’s second-round matchup at this year’s Australian was scheduled for Tuesday night EST (Wednesday morning local time in Sydney). She was playing a WTA Tour fringe player, who everyone on the sports desk had heard of but no one would have expected to put up much of a challenge to the world No. 1 in the early stages of a Grand Slam tournament.

So, when the story came across that Davenport had won, nobody was surprised, and we hurried the story into the paper so that it could make our 10:50 first-edition deadline. As we were preparing for final edition, the dreaded EDS came across the wire.

Quick explanation: The AP will resend about a story about four different ways, and each carries a designator at the top of the second version. An update is just that; it updates the story with additional details or quotes. A lede will top a previous story with a more recent event (say, a later tennis match in the same tournament) and move the previous top event deeper into the story. A writethrough will take a previous story and greatly expand on it, usually adding quotes, analysis and a more inventive opening. An EDS edits a story to fix a typo or factual error.

Well, when the Australian EDS moved Tuesday night, it was to fix a typo. And it was a big ’un. The exact text read:

Eds: SUBS 12th graf to FIX typo in Sprem’s

Karolina Sprem is a Croatian currently ranked around 60th in the world, and may have the most unfortunate name in sports right now – well, since Dick Trickle retired from NASCAR. The AP has been successfully dodging this bullet for about three years.

Until Tuesday.

This is how the 12th paragraph originally read:

Davenport said Sperm’s power surprised her at times.

That’s not something you read in the sports pages every day…