Errata: A Printer's Word for Mistakes
Franklin named his life's wrongs with a printer's term: errata. Not concealed, not agonized over — listed, owned, and corrected where the plate still allowed.
Breaking his indenture to escape his brother's beatings, he judged himself plainly: “It was not fair in me to take this advantage, and this I therefore reckon one of the first errata of my life.”
The metaphor does real work. A sin condemns the author; an erratum marks a correctable fault in one passage of a long book — answered with a correction slip, not despair.
He opened the book with it: he would happily relive his life, “only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.”
Keep an errata list
Name the misprint plainly
Write the mistake down in one factual sentence, as Franklin did — what you did, whom it touched. The printer's term lowers the shame enough to let you look at it.
Set the correction for the next edition
For each erratum, decide what repair is still possible: an apology, a debt repaid, a relationship resumed. Some corrections take years — Franklin's did.
- What can still be corrected?
- What must simply stand on the record?
Change the plate, not just the page
Fix the practice that produced the error so the next impression can't repeat it. Correcting one copy while keeping the flawed plate reprints the fault forever.
He could not unprint the first edition of his life. He could make every impression after it cleaner — and he showed his work.
bite.cards © 2026