Clear communication sometimes relies on one letter.
I recently came across an example with the letter C.
I read a teaser headline, which linked to a news story about a college in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The headline referred to Amherst college. Note the lowercase C.
It was troublesome, because the town of Amherst has 3 institutions of higher education:
🌳 Amherst College
🌳 Hampshire College
🌳 The University of Massachusetts at Amherst (shown here)
At first, I thought the story would be about Amherst College and that the news outlet had missed capitalizing that C.
But the story was actually about Hampshire College, a school that happens to be in the town of Amherst.
True, it is an Amherst college, with Amherst being a descriptor, not part of the name.
But the headline felt sneaky to me. It was local news, and there was no reason to not say, "Hampshire College" in the headline.
I'm quite curious to know why that editorial decision was made. Or was it just a typo? What do you think?
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