errata and/or corrigenda

[bbeeton]

I was asked today, what is the difference between "errata" and "corrigenda"? The young man who asked had done his homework -- he quoted at least a half dozen sources, from the OED to Merriam-Webster to Chicago to Wikipedia. To my dismay, only Wikipedia made a distinction, and they got it right.

In publishing circles, errata refers to recognition of glitches introduced during the publishing cycle; corrigenda identifies and corrects the author's goofs.

Since one of the misprints was found in the editor's column of the journal that I edit, and it was my own failure to adequately proofread my own typing, "corrigenda" was clearly the correct designation.

Both terms have a Latin origin. But why are they now considered to be the same, and why does the spell checker on this site try to tell me that "corrigenda" is not a real word?

[Slava]

My theory is that they have become synonymous in the electronic age because the corrections are made to the 'living' text. In the days of printed materials, slips listing any errata found were printed up separately and supplied with the item, to serve as corrigenda as needed. Now that the corrections are made in 'real time', there is essentially no difference.

Oh, and the spell-check is probably not specific to this site. Rather, it is the one that is in your computer. Right-clicking on the highlighted word should offer the option of adding it to your dictionary for future use. My spell-check offered the nicely appropriate word corrigible as a suggested replacement. The ability to add corrigenda made the "error" eminently corrigible.