Reverting to typo

The Times has been going through one of those staff-culling periods that newspapers conduct every once in a while. It's never nice when friends leave, especially if it is not voluntary, and there has been a slew of leaving parties in the past fortnight.

The latest emailed announcement of a departure was given the subject line "The end of an error", which made me chuckle and suggests that either the departee is leaving of his own volition or that the Times news subs department remains the best repository of black humour.

It doesn't quite match the email from a senior sub after he had recovered from surgery to treat intestinal cancer, in which he announced that his colon had been amended to a semi-colon. However, it did bring to mind a CV that the Times property section, a former employer of mine, received a few years ago during the last big cull.

It was from a freelance sub who had been let go by the news department and was looking for new work. His cover letter said that he had worked for the department in "a particularly exiting period for the paper".

The property chief sub assumed that the error was not a grim joke and turned down the application.