One Little Letter, a World of Difference

Program for public policy school graduates omits one crucial character.

I would venture to guess that just about everyone in the business of writing and publishing information about government and public policy has at least come close to making this mistake: The program for the graduation ceremonies this weekend at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin was printed and distributed with one rather important letter missing from the word "public."

It's just one of those cases where a spellcheck program isn't enough. The school is reprinting the program and sending the corrected version to all graduates. The embarrassed contrition shown by administrators is somewhat ironic, given LBJ's penchant for salty language