Our View: Document needed more polish before release

“Lawyers put their mistakes behind bars, doctors put their mistakes in the ground and we put our mistakes on the front page for all to see,” Mark Twain once observed about journalism.

Over the years, we’ve taken our rightfully-earned lumps for typographical errors appearing in print. The English language can be a challenging beast at times and we understand the pain of proofreading something and finding a word with transposed letters or an issue where an article jumps to the wrong page only after the ink has dried. Publications of any size can be challenging to put together -- a fact we’re well aware of.

However, the errors appearing in the Sweetwater Economic Development Coalition’s location packet directed to decision makers at Rocky Mountain Power and TerraPower show it should have had another set of eyes looking over the pages before it was sent off. Small grammatical issues and a few instances of sentences copied and pasted without being changed can be found in the document. Like any resume coach will tell a job seeker, a resume with a typo will be rejected, and this document is Sweetwater County’s resume as to why the pilot nuclear reactor should be built here. We’re told the packet was well received and was something other counties being looked at by the two companies have not done. We’re not sure if those issues will taint the decision makers’ view of Sweetwater County, but it isn’t the county putting its best foot forward.

As a whole, the document is a great tool to sell companies on relocating or expanding to the area. Having a basic version available to site selectors would definitely be helpful in giving the county an advantage in competing for economic development, and we’re certain those problems will be ironed out. We’re also more than happy to assist the county in the future to ensure similar documents will have that extra layer of polish.

It’s unfortunate such an important document was released with the various typographical errors and other issues, but it makes a great frame to build upon for future proposals.