Academic Blunder: School Mispells Own Name On Yearbook Cover

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Some high school yearbook mistakes can be forgotten quickly.

A student gets misidentified in a photo. Hey, it happens. A teacher is credited with teaching the wrong class. OK, yeah, no problem.

But misspelling the name of the school on the cover of the yearbook that also happens to be the name of the town? That’s a mistake that’s going to be talked about in the teacher’s lounge for years to come.

The yearbook staff at Moorhead (Minn.) high school misspelled the school’s name on the cover of its annual, thus ensuring that the graduating class will forever be known as the one that couldn’t spell its own hometown.

To be fair, the book was proofed (though not well enough, apparently) by a yearbook adviser and students. Unfortunately, nobody noticed that the cover read “Moorehead” with an “e” until it was too late. Cue the sad trombone.

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead spoke with district spokesperson Pam Gibb about the error. “They proofed the book and the cover, and they missed it,” she told the Forum. “I don’t know that there’s much we can do now. It’s a mistake, and it was made.”

What happens now? Gibb told the Forum that the school can’t afford to reprint the book. She told Yahoo News that they are still exploring the possibility of covering the error with a sticker, though nothing has been decided.

The school adviser and yearbook staff can take heart in the fact that they aren’t the first to add an unnecessary “e” to a word. In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle famously misspelled “potato” during an elementary school spelling bee.