Arnold Zwicky's Blog

In Wednesday’s New York Times (Tom Friedman’s column, “Trust, But Verify”), a sentence with:

… a news article about the Jan. 11 meeting in Cairo between Bill Burns, …

My eyes picked up Ca…ro and then Burn… (in the pair of proper names), and my brain combined these to yield Carol Burnett (the comedian). A moment of puzzlement as to what Carol Burnett had to do with Islamist parties in the Middle East, and then I realized my error.

As far as I can recall, Carol Burnett (or television or comedy) hadn’t been on my mind — misreadings and mishearings are often triggered by things you’re thinking about — so the error remains puzzling, though entertaining.

This entry was posted on January 20, 2012 at 8:49 am and is filed under Errors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.