Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens were mistakenly named ‘Princess Street Gardens’ when a new sign was put up recently. The gardens are highly popular with visitors to the city, as they run alongside the famous Princes Street and Edinburgh Castle.
The City of Edinburgh Council has said the problem arose because of a manufacturing mistake, but they have not named the company responsible, perhaps aware of the serious detrimental effects such errors can have on the reputation of a business.
Luckily, the mistake was noticed before the beginning of the Edinburgh Festival period, which sees millions of visitors arrive in Edinburgh each year. A temporary fix has been put in place by blanking out the extra ‘s’ on the sign.
High-profile errors like this can cause huge embarrassment. In this case, the mistake seems to have slipped through the net at various stages, from the initial writing of the sign to production and the sign being put into place in the city centre.
Cases such as this one highlight the issue of careless errors on signs which, unexplainably, are not spotted until they are installed. Presumably, the company producing the sign had some quality-control measures in place, yet no-one noticed the extra letter. Errors like this can be notoriously tricky for some people to notice, as the eye reads the word as if it is correct.
Professional writers are often hired by companies trying to avoid this sort of mistake. A good writing agency will include a proofreading service looking specifically for small errors that tend to be overlooked.
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