A peek into the mind of a pedant

I sometimes amuse myself, and of course perform a great public service, by writing to the Readers’ Editor at The Guardian to point out the occasional errors that pop up in their pages. Here is a collection of them:

There was no year zero
The story 'Medal' for killing Caesar goes on show, which is on page 13 of today's Guardian contains an arithmetical error.

It states correctly that Caesar was assassinated in 44BC but says that today marks the 2,054th anniversary of his death. This calculation assumes that there was a year zero falling between 1BC and 1AD, but there wasn't. In today's parlance, 31 December 1BC was followed immediately by 1 January, 1AD. Consequently today is the 2,053rd anniversary of Caesar's death.

(15 March 2010)

The Madcap laughs
On Page 14 of the Guardian Weekend magazine, 20 February 2010, reference is made to Syd Barrett's album "The Mad Cat Laughs". This album is called "The Madcap Laughs".

(23 February 2010)

Unauthorised autobiography
Today's paper, in its obituary of Dick Francis, includes the sentence: "In his excellent unauthorised autobiography, Dick Francis: A Racing Life (1999), Graham Lord produces some telling circumstantial evidence that Dick could not have written the books without Mary."

I think you meant "biography".

(15 February 2010)

Homophone corner

In column 1, page 3 of Money on 3rd December [2005]:

 

Second, upgrade your Microsoft Windows system. Microsoft constantly unearths security floors and produces free "patches" to resolve the problems.

 

That would be security flaws, I think.

(3 December 2005)