Ch??? flat in absence of local news

April 16, 2001 6:30 AM

Ch??? flat in absence of local news [File under "When Headlines Get Weird"]
posted by Outlawyr (16 comments total)

In case the linked article gets fixed, here it is:

Monday April 16, 9:24 am Eastern Time
Ch??? flat in absence of local news
SANTIAGO, April 16 (Reuters) - Chilean stocks are seen opening unchanged in what is expected to be a sleepy session driven by Wall Street, traders said.

"The lack of incentives at the local level means that the market will be guided by the performance of American Depositary Receipts on Wall Street," one trader said.

On Thursday, the IPSA (^IPSA - news) index of leading shares climbed a mere 0.05 percent to end at 97.05 points in an uneventful pre-holiday session.

posted by Outlawyr at 6:32 AM on April 16, 2001

Oh no, not the Ch-three-question-marks! If it's flat, that's certainly going to bring down Lk!!!, Op:::, and maybe even Ya))). I'm scared now.
posted by hijinx at 6:54 AM on April 16, 2001

When Headlines Get Weird

Should be: "When Copy Editors Can't Be Bothered To Change Wire Service Headlines"

This happens fairly frequently, btw, with many news web sites that just run wire news straight. The Boston Globe website has all sorts of wire stuff that was never intended for public release showing up in its auotmatically updated pages.
posted by briank at 6:59 AM on April 16, 2001

So copy editors not editing copy is not weird?

Weird!
posted by Outlawyr at 7:31 AM on April 16, 2001

Until I read the (brief) article, I thought this was about some poor foreign woman who was suffering from an abnormally flat CHEST, and couldn't figure out why the word "chest" was being censored. Seems like The Onion should take this one on, eh?
posted by starvingartist at 8:01 AM on April 16, 2001

I think the original headline was "All Your Ch??? Are Belong to Us!"

Ok, sorry.
posted by Outlawyr at 8:29 AM on April 16, 2001

I was reading Spin magazine this weekend, and they mentioned a band called "!!!", which is pronounced by making a clicking sound with your tongue (African-tribal-style) three times. Kind of rough on the record company marketing people, if you ask me...

In that light, how would one pronounce "ch???"
posted by fooljay at 10:46 AM on April 16, 2001

One would pronounce it "ch" with a rising intonation and a puzzled expression. Which would be a real trick because the "ch" sound isn't vocalized.
posted by kindall at 11:04 AM on April 16, 2001

Congratulations, you found a typo.
posted by Optamystic at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2001

ouch
posted by Outlawyr at 11:23 AM on April 16, 2001

a favorite of mine is stfhofonfls-kjam.
posted by quonsar at 12:33 PM on April 16, 2001

Is that a wire report you're writing? Want some help with that?
posted by ParisParamus at 12:38 PM on April 16, 2001

Yeah, thanks. I'm having a problem here . . . do you spell "Ch???" with three question marks or four, I can't remember.
posted by Outlawyr at 1:14 PM on April 16, 2001

You always have to proof wire reports before running them, or in my experience, reading them on the air. Back in my college radio station days, I was reading a wire report over the air, and the report was about inmates complaining about the conditions of their rooms in prison. Well, there was a point in the article where one inmate said he wanted a "bigger room." The only problem was that the "b" in "bigger" had been mistakenly--at least I hope mistakenly--replace by the letter n. Fortunately I caught myself before I read it over the air, and narrowly avoided getting angry phone calls from the handful of listeners who actually listened to our station.
posted by rorschach at 2:23 PM on April 16, 2001

They are, of course, referring to Charles Nelson Reilly.
posted by argybarg at 2:33 PM on April 16, 2001

My favorite was the article in the local paper that was titled "Sldlks kgfsl0, title goes here lkjgf" or something like that. They don't have online archives, or everyone could laugh at it for themselves.
posted by Lirp at 6:26 PM on April 17, 2001