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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Is is "Colombia" or "Columbia"? A Prostitution and Spelling Crisis

Supermarkets and journalists make the same common mistake. 



From Legal Insurrection "When the Ivy League is all you know, Columbia is a Country":

The best and the brightest, writing about the Secret Service scandal in the country of Colombia consistently spell it “Columbia” like the University (h/t @BuzzFeedBen via @AlexPappasDC):

The link shows the numerous incorrect spellings of Colombia in the print media and in a CBS Good Morning segment.

As one reader comments:

It’s a common error, but it’s kind of inexcusable for news media reporting on a presidential trip to a country. I think it shows that they are just parroting each other without anyone doing fact checking. If they don’t catch spelling errors, what else don’t they bother verifying any more… 

Here's part of an article about Columbian bananas advertised in a supermarket, "Columbia and Colombia: easily confused?":

Those “grown in Columbia” bananas are back in local family owned markets according to the above ad; the same ones that we saw in April.

Are there similarities with Columbia (the borough) with Colombia (the country)? Are people often confused by Columbia and Colombia?

To clear the issue, we have not been able to find the banana farms in Columbia; though bananas represent a significant portion of Colombia’s agricultural production for export.
Here more information about Colombia, the country:


Maybe some other interesting information that should be noted about Colombia in the future should be this is the country where:
Referring back to the supermarket ad with those "Columbian" bananas beg the question:  "Where's the taxpayer funded party for government employees next time in Columbia?"



1 comment:

  1. It J-school at UNC it was 50 points off for spelling a person's name wrong. I'm pretty sure spelling an entire country or even city wrong was a big no-no too!

    ReplyDelete

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