The President of the Organisation of News Ombudsman, Ian Mayes, writes in the Guardian the oft-repeated story of Johns Hopkins University. It holds the distinction, along with Lucien Freud, of being the most misspelled name in the pages of the British Berliner. "Johns," not being a common name, easily loses the terminal "s" in the minds of most people including journalists.

Between 1999 and 2002 Guardian staff and readers caught this understandable mistake a total of 5 times resulting in a few years where that elusive last "s" found its way onto the end of "John". But recently, with a sudden re-emergence of the university in the news due to statistics about the war in Iraq it releases, the "s" was forgotten four times and twice by readers in letters to the editor.

Mayes writes that this mistake is a "systemic failure," but one that is easily cured. He notes that the Guardian's newsroom is privileged to have a software that allows all journalists to read the letters that are emailed to the paper's ombudsman. If the newsroom's 400 journalists used this tool it would save the paper lots of trouble.

In a related observation, letters to the editor need to adapt to the Internet. Browsing through those of the New York Times one will immediately become annoyed; letters are posted without links to the original article, a task that takes no time and is completely logical for online articles.

Sources: The Guardian, The New York Times