From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: getting it right
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:54:38 -0400

----- Original Message -----
From: "dicconf" <dicconf at radix.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2005 9:42 AM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: getting it right

>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, ronkean at juno.com wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:20:40 -0400 (EDT) "Keith F. Lynch"
> > <kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
> >
> [snip]
> > ...
> >> We're not supposed to contact any of the people involved.
> >>
> >> The person in question is dead, but for some reason does not show
> >> up
> >> under any of these names in the online Social Security Death Index.
> >>
> >> What would you do?
> >>
> >
> > You could pick one of the spellings, or have your manager pick one, and
> > put "(sp?)" after it to indicate the spelling is in doubt.  You could
ask
> > management to contact the customer and ask how they think it should be
> > spelled.
>
> I suspect Keith was offering alternative problems: we're not supposed to
> contact any of the people involved [because, e.g., we don't want to tip
> them off we're working on a story], _or_ they're dead and can't be
> contacted, etc.

As a generality that might make sense.  Specifically, it does not.  Keith
was not "working on a story."  He was proofing and editing either a trial
transcript or a deposition transcript, concerning an individual who had
murdered one or more members of his family and is now serving a long jail
term.  I believe he killed his sister (I wasn't paying close attention when
Keith mentioned it to me because I was finishing up an overdue NASD
arbitration) and it was her name that Keith was trying to establish the
correct spelling of.   The court reporter's notes spelled it one way, but
news reports Keith found in Googling spelled it a different way.  When a
court reporter puts a name in his notes, he usually gives it at least one
and more commonly two checkmarks -- indicating the spelling has been
checked twice.  In this instance the name had *no* checkmarks, and the news
reports agreed on a slightly different spelling.  I believe Keith went with
the news-reported spelling; I would have.

We often Google names.  In my NASD arbitration (done from supplied tapes --
no reporter, no notes) a "Judge Pollack" was referred to (as recently
deceased) and the transcriber (notoriously unreliable) alternated between
"Pollack" and "Pollock."  Google quickly established it was "Pollack."

--Ted White