Local newspaper Cambridge News has been left red-faced after an issue went on sale with an instruction for staff in place of a front-page headline.
Instead of the intended headline for its lead story, the paper went to press with: “100pt splash heading here” emblazoned on the cover, a reference to the intended font size.
The correct headline was “£2m for ‘sex lair’ school” in reference to a council grant to a local academy whose previous head was accused of keeping sex toys in his office.
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In a statement, Cambridge News editor-in-chief David Bartlett said: "I want to apologise sincerely to our readers for this mistake, which happened due to a technical problem.
"We are still looking into how this happened and want our readers to know we take this seriously."
The unfortunate oversight quickly drew attention on social media:
Even the BBC got in on the act:
While Cambridge News editors were no doubt cringing over the error, but it could have been worse. In March 2017 edition of the Lancashire Telegraph went to press with both a placeholder headline and an entire article of Latin gibberish.
It’s not just the big gaffes that can cause headaches for editors - this unfortunate headline from the Kansas Pratt Tribune demonstrates the importance of the humble hyphen:
While unfortunate wording was the undoing of another headline, this one in the Gloucestershire Echo:
A much-mocked CNN headline from February 2016 appeared to suggest that refugee crisis panic had prompted Australia to forget its own geography:
The story actually referred to a far more plausible fence between Slovenia and Austria.
And then there was the time the Irish Herald accompanied a sports story about Man United strikes Romelu Lukaku with a picture of grime artist Stormzy:
Sometimes the words are fine and the pictures are fine, just… not together: