Many years ago when I worked in publishing I found out that it was absolutely forbidden to put anything on a page – during the preparation, drafting, or layout stages for example – that could cause a problem if it ever appeared in print. Because mistakes will happen if they can.

An example would be if a page designer were to put a silly or humorous caption beneath a photo in the belief that colleagues in the editorial department would – once they’d admired the brilliant humour of it – add the correct caption.

Disaster strikes when the phoney caption gets missed. For instance, if a busy editor fails to spot “skinny bloke in a bowler hat” and replace it with the correct caption “Lord so-and-so entering the House of Lords”,* then the mistake gets published, and somebody on the staff gets reprimanded.

My mistake!

Something like this happened to me this week when I inadvertently published a post entitled ‘What Do You Bring to the Table?’. I’d stored a note of an idea for a future post in the wrong place and a keyboard slip meant it was published by mistake.

It was garbled nonsense of course to anyone but me (nevertheless, it still garnered a couple of ‘likes’. Thankyou), and as soon as I knew about it I un-published the post. The correct version will appear soon.

Thanks to those of you who wrote and told me about the mistake (including my big-sister, still looking out for me after all these years!). Hat in hand, I’m sorry for my error.

• This is not an example of a phoney caption, I meant to write ‘so-and-so’.