Newsletter

Noted with Interest

Be Alert

Almost two thirds - 62 per cent - of Brits concentrate so hard while texting that they lose their peripheral vision, researchers found.

Britain’s first 'Safe Text' street has been created complete with padded lampposts to protect millions of mobile phone users from getting hurt in street accidents while walking and texting.

Around one in ten careless Brits has suffered a "walk 'n text" street injury in the past year through collisions with lampposts, bins and other pedestrians.

Be Bold but Accurate

A number of newspaper stories have reported that an 11-year-old southwestern Michigan boy noticed that a notation on the Tower of Time (at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History), in bold lettering, mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an era.

Of interest to editors worldwide:

1. The congratulatory letter sent by the Smithsonian misspelled the boy’s name and misstated the name of his city.
2. The error has long rankled the paleobiology department's staff, who noticed it even before the Tower of Time was erected 27 years ago.

Be Brief

Brief writing is thriving with the publication of Not Quite What I Was Planning, an anthology of six-word memoirs. Amusing examples abound ("Most successful accomplishments based on spite"), and more than a few have a melancholy kick ("He left me for good eventually").