Friday, May 04, 2012

No, who signs his

Quick, baseball fans: How many runs did Fred Lynn score on that fateful night* at Tiger Stadium?

If your answer is "I don't know," have another big orange.** The column is about the night Lynn drove in 10 runs. Even if "10-RBI" wouldn't fit in the top line (and it looks like it would), you can't shorten something by making it wrong. That's against the rules.

One good reason to teach editors how to calculate the margin of sampling error is that numbers belong in the realm of discussion, not magic. Our side of the newsroom needs to own its stats as thoroughly as the sports department owns its. If confusing runs with RBIs in display type is the sort of damage the War on Editing hath wrought downtown, we're closer than we thought, but not in a good way.


* June 18, 1975
** Or go play third base. I don't give a darn.

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