Photo credit: Ajay Kumar Singh Diwali is known as the Festival of Lights.

Because I sent an e-mail to some members of the International Institute at Schoolcraft College concerning a “Dwali” Breakfast some of my students will be organizing, a colleague dropped by my office to tell me the correct spelling for the celebration is “Diwali.” Because she knows that I know virtually nothing about this Hindu celebration, she was concerned that I had not made a typo; that I did not know how to spell the name correctly and that I could embarrass myself if I continued to misspell Diwali.

As my colleague was talking to me, I immediately thought of Alix Ahlengren’s insightful response to my blog entry “Your Pronunciation is Good.” After agreeing with me about the benefits of encouragement, Ahlengren argues that a professor should “talk to the student after class about a mistake that could potentially be repeated and show him/her the error.”

Correcting a student or colleague or friend is always difficult and one that requires some tact; especially when a larger issue might requires that we deal with an error publicly. For example, had I written that “Diwali was a celebration that came out of the Islamic tradition,” my colleague would have needed to respond to everyone to whom I had sent my message in order to let them know that Diwali comes from the Hindu tradition. Because most of the individuals who had received my e-mail would know little about Diwali, Hinduism, and Islam, it would be likely that they would repeat this erroneous information to others.

However, something that could have been a misspelling in a casual note did not require a public response. By coming to my office, my colleague allowed me to save face while making sure that I could correct my error before I had a chance to repeat it.

I am grateful to my colleague because the error was not the result of a typo. In doing some preliminary research about the celebration, I had written down the name incorrectly in some of my notes. Because I am very careful about getting such spellings correct and am not prone to making that type of error, I did not verify the spelling before sending out the e-mail. Nor would I have checked the spelling before introducing the “Diwali Breakfast” assignment to my students next week.

Alix Ahlengren is correct. As professors, part of our job is correcting students as well as encouraging them. The private conversation which Alix recommends was modeled well by my colleague and is one that professors need to follow whenever possible. Yet when we must confront a student in front of the class or hit “reply all” in response to a colleague’s e-mail, we must remember that it is as important to minimize embarrassment as it is to correct the error.