Last month we had a big honking typo in the Shuttle. Possibly none of you noticed, or you were being polite, or maybe you’re so used to seeing typos in the Shuttle that you didn’t think it was a big deal.

It was a big deal to me and Art Director Annette Aloe, who by the way is one of the best graphic artists I have worked with in 40-some years in the business and here she is at Weavers Way, la-di-dah. In real publishing operations, this kind of mistake would cue a Quality Control alert, kind of like the mortality and morbidity reviews on TV doctor shows. 

OK, still reading? To our horror, the promo for the Germantown Farmers Market read:

A D D R E S S   H E R E

So as a service to Shuttle readers and to the Germantown Farmers Market — which (please note) is held every Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. in Market Square, on Germantown Avenue between School House and Church lanes — here’s our QC report:

I laid out the page — that is, I drew the sizes of everything on the page so Annette would know exactly what to do with her handy-dandy graphics-arts software. Now, the problem with this nearly universal practice is you almost always have to do the layout before you actually know how long the stories are. In this case, a story came in short, so I asked Annette to make the farmers market promo bigger. (Because in print, things actually have to fit.) 

This was a great solution. Except. Annette reworked a draft version of the graphic. It fit. I smiled. I OK’d the page. (The proofers never saw it — they had approved the earlier version.) 

So there you have it. I’m sorry, Germantown Farmers Market; sorry, Shuttle readers; sorry, Annette, sorry for every typo, past and furture. Forget the Daily Planet — even the Shuttle is a miracle of moving parts.

Or, as my friend Les used to say, “Sometimes you put out the paper, and sometimes it escapes.”