July 12, 2012
Fifth-graders correct Washington Post book review, editor calls correction “adorable”
by Kelly Burdick
Above, Washington Post book reviewer Dennis Drabelle holds a letter from Mrs. Reed’s fifth grade class at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda, Maryland. The letter points to an error in a recent review by Drabelle: the Titanic actually hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, not April 15 as Drabelle’s review had it.
“Isn’t that letter adorable?” asks Ron Charles, an editor of reviews at the Post, via Twitter. “Most of the correction letters begin with some kind of irate statement, ‘Isn’t anyone reading the paper over there?’ This was a nice change of pace.”
Kelly Burdick is the executive editor of Melville House.
Yesterday was a bad, bad day for book editors UPDATE: Today also sucks 
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2 Comments
As I understand it, it HIT the iceberg on the 14th but it SANK on the 15th. My birthday is April 15th so when I was little that confused me, too!
The final sentence of the students’s letter contains a misleading dangling modifier: “Based on our research”. The Titanic (subject of the sentence) was not based on the students’s research. Rather, their conclusion was based on their research. What they meant to say was, “Our research shows that the Titanic hit the iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912.” The ship hit the iceberg whether the students researched it or not. The currently popular but vague phrase “based on” will very often cause trouble, so it’s best to avoid it.