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Diploma flub spells embarrassment
By ROBERT KING
© St. Petersburg Times, BROOKSVILLE -- Hernando High likes to bill itself as "A New Millennium School."
The problem is that "millennium" -- with two L's and two N's -- is easy to misspell. So easy, in fact, that at graduation last month the school handed out 262 diplomas that were tucked neatly into vinyl carrying cases embossed with the words, "HERNANDO HIGH SCHOOL: A NEW MILLENIUM SCHOOL." Somewhere, millennium dropped an N. The error might have slipped by had not Anne Schlotterlein, a member of the Class of 2001 who has acted in productions at the New Millennia Studio in Brooksville, solved a mystery that had been gnawing at her since graduation. "I looked at it for a few days and I couldn't figure out what it was," Schlotterlein said. "And after about a week, I figured out the word millenium was spelled wrong." She mentioned it to career counselor Christine Kostis, who said school staffers were aware of the problem and, she assumed, were trying to correct it. But assistant principals Jane Padgett and Rick Wilson said they were unaware of the misspelling until a St. Petersburg Times reporter asked them Thursday about Schlotterlein's discovery. Padgett said a school staffer, whom she declined to name, okayed a proof of the cover with the misspelling on it before it was sent to press. But the company that makes the diplomas and the diploma holders, Herff Jones Inc., also accepted blame. "M-I-L-L-E-N-N-I-U-M," said Herff Jones representative Denny Kollmeyer, as soon as he received a phone call from the Times about the error. "This was a printing error and we're going to take care of it," Kollmeyer said. "We misspelled it. If they would have spelled "school' wrong, I think it's still up to the printer. It's something we should catch." Kollmeyer said Herff Jones would print new diploma holders for all the Hernando High graduates at no cost and even pay the postage to ship them to the students. He hopes to get them out by the end of the month. School officials felt guilty that no one at the school caught the mistake before graduation. Once the diploma holders arrived, they were moved around in cartons and stuffed with the diplomas without much thought to the spelling on the cover, Padgett said. In Hernando High's case, the phrase "New Millennium School" isn't just nice self-promotion. Hernando is one of 20 high schools in the state that have received grant money and assistance under the state's "New Millennium School" project, which emphasizes a closer marriage between academic classes and vocational training. "It's embarrassing for us. It's embarrassing for the school," said Wilson, who showed off last year's diploma holders to educators around the state. It wasn't clear Thursday whether those had been misspelled too. "They stay with kids forever," Padgett added. "They'll look at them 50 years from now." Clearly, the word "millennium" is no piece of cake. From January 1998 to December 2000, the misspelled version appeared at least 16 times in the Times. Guilty parties included reporters, editors and headline writers. Still, as the end-of-the-century hype increased, the misspelled version appeared in the names of businesses, New Year's celebrations, newly enacted laws and the titles of plays. Kollmeyer on Thursday even pulled out a Webster's New Compact Dictionary from 1978 that had millenium, with one N, as an acceptable spelling. But most dictionaries, including Merriam Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary and all four dictionaries cited at Dictionary.com, come down in favor of millennium. Schlotterlein, who plans to pursue a career in music, doesn't consider herself a flawless speller. She learned "millennium" after writing the word several times in connection to her work at the studio. Still, Schlotterlein finds it amusing that her alma mater messed up her diploma holder. "I find it highly ironic," she said.
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