From Fayettevillecq to Zurichcq

Since we misspelled February in the masthead in our last issue, we probably shouldn’t be making fun of anybody else for such things, but we couldn’t help wondering about a travel story in the Feb. 3 issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

In the Associated Press story, it seems that just about every town in Switzerland ended with “cq.” There was Zermattcq, Verbiercq, Sioncq, La Sagecq, La Forclazcq and Arollacq. And that was just on the front page of the travel section before the story jumped to Page 2H.

Then an editor pointed out to us that “cq” is code for “checked,” meaning an editor at the D-G had checked the spelling of those foreign names and deemed them to be correct. The only problem was, somebody was supposed to remove the cqs before the story got into the paper.

Heck, we commend the D-G for taking the initiative to check the spelling of those names. We figured it out, but most of their readers probably didn’t.