The perils of find-and-replace
When I was working in book publishing, preparing manuscripts to be typeset, I got pretty handy with the find-and-replace function in Microsoft Word. I eventually created a list of time-saving searches to do as soon as I started working on a document: replace all the double spaces with single spaces; replace “colour” with “color”; stuff like that. As with any shortcut, though, it’s very easy to put a foot wrong — thereby creating more work for yourself. For example, if I wanted to change all occurrences of “one” to “1,” a sloppy find-and-replace could result in puzzling references to the “teleph1.” Without specifying character sensitivity or “whole words only,” Changing “Tom” to “Thomas” could leave you with monstrosities like “botthomas” or “sthomasach.” Making a mistake like that, and having to clean up after yourself, is a good education in the importance of thinking about all the potential consequences of a given action and applying the appropriate restrictions.
The Vatican, of all places, provides us with an object lesson in the perils of overreliance on technology, as noted at PrayTell today. From the English version of Pius XII’s 1954 encyclical Sacra virginitas on the Vatican Web site:
3. Indeed, right from Apostolic Times New Roman this virtue has been thriving and flourishing in the garden of the Church.
…
51. …We recall to those also whose will has been weakened by upset nerves and whom some doctors, someTimes New Roman even Catholic doctors, are too quick to persuade that they should be freed from such an obligation….
A simple mistake? Perhaps. But if it results in a redesign of www.vatican.va, I for one will consider it the work of the Holy Spirit.
My favorite example of this: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/07/christian_sites_ban_on_g_word.html
This is classic. But someone out there has way too much times new roman on their hands to have uncovered this.
Steve — thanks for linking, that is wonderful.
I assume this was discovered by someone who needed to consult Sacra virginitas (and who doesn’t?), rather than by someone clicking around the Vatican Web site all day. But it did make me wonder whether the same thing has happened in other documents. (Perhaps it was fixed only in the high-traffic ones, like Gaudium et spes). Sure enough, a quick Google search turned up a reference to “that Light which has shown its mysterious power strongest in the Times New Roman of greatest difficulty for the Church” in Summi pontificatus. Maybe it’s only Pius XII who’s been affected?
I found this sentence from that same document rather ironic: “The stress of our Times New Roman, as well external as internal, material and spiritual alike, and the manifold errors with their countless repercussions are tasted by none so bitterly as by that noble little cell, the family.”
Mollie – yes, I was consulting that document (for my own improvement…), not just lounging around at the Vatican site.
Best,
Fr. Anthony, OSB
Steve, that’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.
I don’t understand why anyone would search for the word “times” and replace it with “Times New Roman”. Is it a bug in the website software, e.g. fixing the data along with the metadata? (?)
Re: Summi Pontificatus: goofy replacements or not, that is some truly fruity prose. “are tasted by none so bitterly as by that noble little cell, the family”. Shooting for an exalted style and missing the mark is such a bummer.
This thread:
It was the best of Times New Roman, it was the worst of Times New Roman.
Well played, William.
I sincerely hope none of these documents quote Ecclesiastes 3. That could get a little awkward.
– Now, class, what does this remind you of? Anybody?
– The new English translation of the liturgy?
– Yes, excellent! The same mechanical mindset, which leads to sublime incompetence, is clearly in evidence in both.
These are the Times New Roman that try men’s souls . . .
Reminds me of this incident:
http://books.google.com/books?id=5i1Ql7QQy0kC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=thomas+massey+tom-tide&source=bl&ots=X3l6Fk1Yk7&sig=lMEGcd-y2YHVwdJeOFx3kGBoIJs&hl=en&ei=mJQPTJT-NYG88gbLkdSKCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA
Now THAT was funny, Craig. :)
Thanks all for this hilarious thread (I coulda been having laffs here instead of arguing about Rush and Rand elsewhere).
“Tom Tide-Tidey” sounds an awful lot like a hobbit name to me, William, C., certainly along the same alliterative, Saxon lines as Bilbo Baggins or Gaffer Gamgee. What say you?
Agree. Tom-tide Tidey. Wonderful. He would fit in The Wind in the Willows, too.
Thanks, Mollie, for a helpful hint. I learned to type many decades ago from a little old Sister of Loretto in summer school, and I can’t get over the old habit of double spacing after periods and colons. I never thought of find and replace. (I knew it worked for words, but never thought of doing it for spaces.)
I think I most appreciated the search-and-replace tool when I was working on a document that had been scanned using OCR software or copied-and-pasted from a PDF. The text would always end up with some weird character substitutions, like the numeral 1 instead of the letter “l” (or vice-versa). My eye might not pick it up, but I could search for things like “1y” and “l9″ and find them that way.
I also had a few searches I did just to look for common mistakes: I’d search for the word “form,” for example, to make sure it wasn’t meant to be “from.” Spell-check wouldn’t pick that up, of course, and often my eye didn’t either!
“Tom-tide Tidey” could definitely have flowed from the pen of J.R.R. himself, Jean. If I close my eyes, I can hear Tom Bombadil singing it aloud as he roams his valleys and meadows. :)
And I know you are heartbroken that the filming of “The Hobbit” appears to be on indefinite hold because of MGM’s money woes, unless, of course, the limping studio’s latest Oscar-worthy release, “Hot Tub Time Travel,” breaks all box office records and provides funding for Tolkien’s prequel to LOTR. ;)
Apostolic Times New Roman = A newly discovered epistle of St. Paul.
William C., I didn’t know that MGM was making “The Hobbit.” But here’s a little something that will tom-tide-tidey you over until the movie gets made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC73PHdQX04
“And Times New Roman… goes by… so slowly… and Times New Roman can do… so much… Are you… still MIIIINE?”
“Signs of the Times New Roman”
“…If you fall, I will catch you I’ll be waiting… Times New Roman after Times New Roman…”
It is such an easy problem to fix. Just have the computers go back and erase every occurrence of New or Roman.
No, no, no — this would give “Paul’s Epistle to the s, one of the books of the Testament, has been ly translated into Russian by Ivan Gorov, the well known historian of the tic ov Dynasty (he k personally the last of the ovs), who is actually a Catholic though not a Catholic and who uses not the Cyrillic script but the script.”
The correct solution is to type Replace: “Times New Roman” with “Times”.
I presume Jim McK was joking. But what I like about his solution is that it has the potential to appeal to both conservatives and progressives by removing everything “Roman” and everything “new”!
Many conservatives would be all in favor of removing “New” and “TImes” if “York” can be included in the mix.
Thank you Mollie.
You expressed it better than I ever could.