As this semester’s Keeper of the Quotes, I transcribe all the ridiculous things we say in the newsroom into a text edit file for posterity and some busy night a few weeks from now when we’ll all sit around laughing at the things we said a month ago rather than working. Then I erase the board so we have room to say more funny things or write down each other’s statements out of context.

As copy chief, I sometimes write on the board errors that make me laugh. These were my favorites recently:

• foreword (instead of forward, weirdest homophone mix-up ever)
• nurtition (like four times in one article)
• general manger
• Provost Bost Babes (instead of Bob Bates)

On a totally nerdy tangent, I think it would be incredibly fascinating to do a content analysis of our quote board archives from the past few years to see how our cultural themes and memes cycle in and out. Of course, the things that really become part of the lexicon here don’t make the board, because by definition they’ve become too normal. Solely from my impressions, I think this year we have more potty humor and fewer death threats compared to last year.