Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Why Spelling Matters: L. A. school district didn't notice capitalization error in terrorist threat

This is beautiful. The entire Los Angeles Unified School District shut down today because of an e-mail terrorism threat from someone who identified himself as a jihadist. But New York schools received the same threat and considered it a hoax.

Why? Because of a spelling error.

Here is NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, explaining one of the reasons New York decided not to close its schools:

Bratton said one reason authorities believed the email was a hoax was because the word Allah was not capitalized: "The language in the email would lead us to believe that this is not a jihadist initiative... That would be incredible to think that any jihadist would not spell Allah with a capital 'A.'"

So the literate police in New York noticed something that the semi-literate educators in L.A. missed, causing the huge West coast school district to lose a whole school day.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:24 AM

    Blessed be Moe Hawmed

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7:52 PM

    Literate, yes, but not necessarily wise given that pointing out the criterion informs our enemies. "We didn't find the threat to be credible," should've been sufficient. :/

    ReplyDelete

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