I don't remember which of my college reporting classes it was, but one professor had a policy which allowed you to throw out a grade for a single assignment at the end of term, if you had never misspelled anyone's name in any assignment for the entire quarter.

Needless to say, very few grades were tossed out -- and I wasn't an exception.

The guys over at Powerline point out that The New York Times needs a similar lesson from my old professor on the importance of getting names right.

An article in some copies on Wednesday about Congressional efforts to pass legislation to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers misspelled — yet again — the surname of the attorney general of the United States, in three of four references. He is Alberto R. Gonzales, not Gonzalez. (The Times has misspelled Mr. Gonzales’s name in at least 14 articles dating to 2001 when he became White House counsel. This year alone Mr. Gonzales’s name has been misspelled in February and March, and in two articles in April.)

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An article on the Street Scene page in Business Day on Friday, about the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s entry into bankruptcy law practice, misspelled the name of another law firm that recently lost a bankruptcy specialist. It is Willkie Farr & Gallagher, not Wilkie. (The Times has misspelled the firm’s name in at least 50 articles since 1958. The “Willkie” comes from Wendell L. Willkie, who joined the firm shortly after losing the 1940 presidential election to Franklin D. Roosevelt and remained there until his death in October 1944.)

Of course, whoever's writing the corrections needs some help too. Who is the antecedent of "his" in "his death in October 1944" Willkie or Roosevelt?