What’s a typo good for? Not much, but when it’s 90F, or an especially busy day, or both, the errant letter that changes a word or phrase can be good for a laugh, as long as you catch it before it gets published. 

We’ll start with a common one, at least for me: the town manger. Thankfully, it is an easy one to catch when you do one of the best things you can do when writing most anything: Reading the whole piece aloud. That is how the town manger becomes the town manager.

This week I was writing a meeting story that mentioned Wiscasset’s capital reserve, the account some of the bigger ticket items come out of. It is a dry, accurate phrase for the account that helps get a lot of important things bought or done in town. I wrote into the article the phrase I have written countless times; then, as I often do, I turned from that piece to some other work and then returned to it to finish it, and it stood right out: I had really typed capital preserve. 

Not too far off, since some capital projects preserve a building by replacing its roof, for example, or they preserve services by getting a town department’s needs met; but still, that is not what the account is called, so I did not preserve the errant letter “p,” instead preserving accuracy by removing it.

Week’s positive parting thoughts: The “s” on thoughts is no typo. We have kudos for two Wiscasset young people this week. Wiscasset Christian Academy already produced champion volleyball teams and the phenom Aleeya Jones. Wiscasset Newspaper readers have gotten to follow her athletic accomplishments since her childhood. Great news came Monday night to the paper from Jones’ mother Julie: Her daughter, whose college career began at Iowa Western Junior College, has now been recruited to Division 1 Tennessee Tech University for volleyball and will attend there this fall.

“We are pumped her dream is coming true! First volleyball athlete from Wiscasset Christian Academy to go play for a Division 1 school,” Julie Jones said. The athlete and her family, who raise money annually for Dean Snell Cancer Foundation, have again done Wiscasset proud. 

So has Wiscasset Middle High School student and Wiscasset Parks and Recreation track and field athlete Bryan Gagnon. As Phil Di Vece reported recently, Gagnon qualified for this year’s USATF Junior Olympic Nationals in California.

Congratulations to these two residents and their families, their schools and their town.