Yes, The Northern Star does make mistakes.

On Monday morning an irate and somewhat rude person who claimed to be a faculty member called the Star to point out what he thought was a blatant error. It seemed that a Star headline had used the word “tressel” in place of “trestle.” He asked if the newspaper had any proof readers and said he thought third graders might do a better job.

We don’t mind people pointing out our errors except when it’s done in such an immature manner.

Like any other newspaper, the Star occasionally makes mistakes such as misquotes, factual errors and misspelled words. We don’t deny that.

However, when errors do occur in our paper we are embarrassed by them, and we strive that much harder to make our publication error free—even though such a goal borders on the impossible.

The difference between a Northern Star worker and the average college student or faculty member is that when a Star editor or reporter makes a mistake 20,000 people see it. We’re aware of this fact and know it’s a risk we take every time an edition of the Star is printed.

But to the man who acted as if misspelling the word “trestle” was comparable to the beginning of World War III, we have one thing to say. There are two correct spellings to this word—and one happens to be “tressel.”

Sometimes even third graders use dictionaries. Apparently one faculty member doesn’t.