Garbage In – Garbage Out

The New Yorker magazine has one of the most storied style guides in publishing, as famous to some as those of The Times or The Wall Street Journal.  They also tend to have more thorough fact checkers and proofreaders, publishing, as they do, only once a week (or two).  Oddly, though, this interesting bit of typography crept into both the print and on-line versions of this excessively blogged-about profile of the elusive English graffitist, Banksy:

But for every litter freak or culture purist driven to indignation by Banksy there’s a person who is entranced. While setting up the show in Los Angeles, Banksy ordered a pizza, ate it, and tossed the box in a Dumpster. Within weeks, the pizza box was sold on eBay, for a hundred and two dollars. The seller suggested that a few anchovies that had been left inside might yield traces of Banksy’s DNA.
Dept. of Popular Culture: Banksy Was Here: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Now Pawn will concede that there is a trademark in the books for the word “Dumpster” but unless there is a record of this particular receptacle bearing that brand name, perhaps someone in rewrite got a little carried away.  Call a Dumpster a dumpster, and let’s move on.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *