In preparing the records for the present quarter, a review fell due of the dispatches in which the Deputy of the Warden of the Sluice has appeared. It produced a finding the gazette is bound to set out plainly, in keeping with the practice of any paper that holds its own inconsistencies worth the trouble of acknowledging.
The matter concerns dispatches filed before the twenty-fourth of May. They begin with the report of the fog of the eleventh of April, in which the Deputy was first mentioned, and run on through several pieces about the sluice, the records review, and the conditions reports of that earlier period. Across them, this paper referred to the Deputy as “he,” then “she,” then “his,” then “her,” in no order at all. There was no consistency of preference. There was no pattern by which a reader could have guessed which form any given occasion would take. The inconsistency was old. We did not notice it for a long time. Noticing it late only made it plainer.
The Deputy’s stated preference, set down in our own records since the spring and confirmed on inquiry, is for the forms “her” and “she,” in that order. In the dispatches of the present quarter, from the twenty-fourth of May to the date of this notice, the gazette has observed that preference without exception, and undertakes, henceforth and without further occasion for review, to continue to do so. The earlier dispatches will be left in the form they were filed. A record amended after the fact stops being a record of the time it was made; the present notice stands in place of any such alteration.
The Deputy, approached so that this paper might offer its apology, accepted it, we are given to understand, with the forbearance for which she has, across several seasons of more pressing matters, become known. No further comment was sought. None was offered. The matter, in her hand as much as in ours, is now considered addressed.
This paper records its regret. We ask the reader to consider that the inconsistency was the small, dispiriting kind that shows a still-young publication is not yet always as careful as its standards require. The standards remain. The carefulness, this paper undertakes, will improve.
We regret the inconvenience.