During my USMC career I've noticed many, many misspellings. It's seems to be a tradition. Two of favorites were: the "staggard logs" obstacle on one of the courses at The Basic School, right were Agent Starling was interrupted on her run at the beginning of Silence of the Lambs; and all of the emergency exit doors on the 10th Marines training pool: "NOT A EXIT."
Those two, and many others, I always attributed to the mindset of, "good initiative, Lance Corporal. That'll do."
More annoying was my time on staffs where officers continually used "enroute" in briefings, and mispronounced "cache" and "potable" water. When questioned about it the Marines usually said "but that's the way I've always seen/heard it."
In the end it usually comes down to: "we'll accomplish the mission even if it ain't pretty."

The "cache" one always got the budding William Safire going in me, too.

How about ordinance instead of 'ordnance'?

I know this isn't a spelling thing, but I'm usually surprised when defense intellectual types get the SOF-SF thing confused.

Also, HOW HARD IS IT TO PRONOUNCE ODIERNO!?!?!!? It's just like it's spelled -- there are no silent letters and no 'loud' ones. Oh-Dee-AIR-No. I am always amazed when either newscasters, Soldiers, or anyone in between starts putting all kinds of crazy letters in there (usually they stick an 'R' after the O to give it an "Ordierno" flavor.

More to the substance of this officer's award-winning (really?) article:

Author writes: "The United States Army has developed many of its own homegrown counterinsurgency experts with names like Patraeus (doctorate in international affairs from Princeton), McMasters (doctorate in American history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), and Mansoor (doctorate in military history from Ohio State University)."

I don't think it is fair to attribute these experts to the US Army. That's a real misrepresentation and these officers in question deserve more there. In truth the Army doesn't do much at all to 'develop' their own counterinsurgency experts - or any other expert for that matter.

Army PME schools are uniformly poor, ridiculously outdated and irrelevant. These guys are experts largely because they went against the status quo, and against what their branch managers likely suggested along the way, and got their own educations elsewhere. The Army facilitated that simply by affording them the time and money to do so - at the expense of a rather substantial ADSO (additional duty service obligation). Without their own foresight and thirst for knowledge thse guys would have muddled on to their next lame service school and contributed little to the COIN fight, or any other.

I'll bet these guys were repeatedly told not to go back to school because some looming knowledge development (KD) job was going to be missed. We remain our own worst enemy.

Signed
Dr. Hunter (who did the schooling exclusive of the ADSOs and the Army dime)

Tom, tell me you purposely misspelled LtGen. Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller's and Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daily's names to see if some "real" Marine would catch it?

Chesty Piller indeed!

Sometimes those misspellings can't be helped. When I wrote my thesis at Naval Postgraduate School in 1984, I typed it up myself on a spiffy new KAYPRO II computer, printed it out and turned it in. After much editing it was approved. Well almost - it had to be done in a format the KAYPRO could not handle. So I turned to a department approved typist who did it up on an IBM Selectric. The result was in the correct format but he misspelled Ronald Reagan's name each and every time it appeared in the text, resulting in at least 20 embarrassing errors. Ronald Regan was everywhere and Ronald Reagan was nowhere. Since the retyping delayed the end result by a couple of weeks and I had to leave for my new duty station in Korea, there was no time to correct it. So if you see it somewhere, Tom, please forgive the misspellings.

I love this blog Tom and your books. But isn't this a little anal? I see some above alluding to O's and NCO's that didn't use proper terminology or pronunciation and how that annoyed them. I never heard anyone complain about that in the Grunts. Give me the Captain who drank, cussed and screwed everything he could and thought powerpoint was a target designation system. They always were better leaders and tacticians in my experience.

Quite frankly, I never trusted leaders who were so perfect and well versed. Especially in the Marine Corps. But yet, they always seemed to be able to pin on stars. Maybe that's the problem. The services needed great generalship this decade and they got exactly the opposite in so many cases. So give me Al Gray, Puller, Mattis, Zinni, Howlin' Mad Smith and Krulak version one. And I'll take Petraeus too even though I think he's a dork and the exact opposite of the type of leaders I loved.

I have read some of Zinni's books. Found some typos too. I'd follow him to hell and back. Maybe he can't spell? But I bet he would be the first one with his fist in my skull if my weapon didn't fire because it wasn't clean.

Lastly, shouldn't Col. Keenan catch your angst here? I am not a journalist, but shouldn't the editor have some culpability (My big word) here?

Of the entire edition of the MC Gazette, all you comment on is the spelling of one of 156 Army BGens surnames? I didn't realize he was a deity. Of course spell checkers are also to blame as they make people lazy. One I often see is loose where they mean lose.

To keep you worried, I will look out for minor typos in your writings and mock them. I make spelling errors often as I get too focused on content. For all you aspiring writers out there, a good technique is to read your final draft aloud.

News tip: What happened at www.military.com? That's a major website that has been down for three days now.

The Gazette has long tradition, great editors, and a good track record over the years, but it never has had deep pockets nor extensive staffing - certainly nothing of the scope of the US Naval Institute (and that's not all that deep either).

Tom, I'd cut 'em some slack, especially were I as you, an ink-stained wretch of long standing and almost certainly some curious editorial blunders of your own.

Give the magazine credit: the Gazette, like USNI Proceedings, has always opted for editorial freedom ahead of the company line. Not every article is flawless nor every issue above average, but the overall performance is like that of the Marine Corps itself: honest, high-minded, competent, and dedicated to the nation. Cut some slack - let he who is without typos cast the first stone.

"Nice video of Royal Gurkha Regiment in Afghanistan. I don't buy the assertion that they have a "unique bond" with the Afghans, and they aren't really aren't "thousands of miles" from home -- more like 1,300 miles. But still good stuff."

Ehm, say what? ;)

If I put through a badly written policy recommendation I would rightly be hauled over the coals for spelling or grammatical errors.

However it is far more important that it is clear, concise and evidence based. How much of the advice that is given to senior officers is laid out in such a fashion?

Ultimately what matters is that a message from top to bottom or vice versa is honest and not filtered by ideology, that's what can get people killed for nothing.

Before Wanat and Kamdesh were honest reports being made? Were they being listened to? So don't bother about spelling, worry about honesty.

Unless your name is McMaster or Petraeus. Hell, I'll just keep calling all marine NCOs "Sergeant" - that's always good for sveveral minutes of angry fun :).

Is content more important than style? Maybe. Is attention to detail an indicator of quality work? Maybe. As the saying goes, there are three sides to every coin.

I will offer that maybe the Gazette has lost some of its standing as the preeminent venue for professional debate. Read Mr. Keenan's editorial from February 2009 when he admonished readers for not participating in the debate.

For me the Gazette has become a bit of a navel gazing enterprise. There are so many excellent venues for discussion and debate that I don't feel I need to limit myself to the one with the eagle, globe, and anchor on it. As a Marine I know that Marines tend to believe that the emblem is a seal of quality; if it doesn't have the eagle, globe, and anchor plastered all over it, then it's probably rubbish.

Well, I'm growing weary of reading the same names in the letters to the editor and authors of articles. I'm also growing weary of the money making endeavor that the Marine Corps Association seems to have become. I'll likely let me membership expire when the time comes.

Personally, I hope I don't let my pedantic tendencies overwhelm my ability to absorb the content (but yes, one should probably spell names correctly). However, the Gazette does not satisfy my professional curiosity anymore because the content is lacking. Maybe Mr. Keenan should look to that as a cause for diminished participation instead of chastising the readership. Maybe Mr. Ricks is right. The lack of attention to detail is a symptom of a greater problem.

For what it's worth, he also misspelled former Secretary of State Rice's first name:

"...the likes of GEN David Patraeus, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and to the Department of Defense during the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice

Spelling booboos are everywhere anymore - from my local paper up to the NY Times. Guess it was that phonics phase they went through a while ago.