Netizens were tickled pink after seeing photos of Cebu City officials walking the downtown streets during Friday’s opening event of the 2025 Sinulog festivities holding a banner that read: “CBEU CITY GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL”.
It was not the only erroneous banner during the parade, as another read “CEBU NORMAL UNIVERISTY”.
The banners look to have been provided by the same printer, so we aren’t faulting the Cebu City Government or the Cebu Normal University here.
We also understand why the city officials or representatives of that school had no choice but to carry their respective banners during the parade, there might not have been a last-minute replacement available and they just took the development in stride and in good sport.
This calls to mind another gaffe that made it to a banner. This time a huge one draped over a building in Manila, greeting a former first lady on her “93th” birthday.
Sure, it’s good for a laugh. But this could also be seen more seriously.
But first, let’s get something of the way. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of being human. That includes this newspaper. We would be lying if we said typos and similar errors never made it to final print; they have and many times too. So we understand if someone somewhere makes a mistake.
But for that “CBEU CITY” error to have been made it that far, from data encoding to the actual printing of a banner that can be spotted some distance away means no one bothered to proofread, no one bothered to check, and no one bothered to correct the error.
And for those errors to have been paraded around for Cebuanos and people around the world --because the Sinulog is now a global event-- too see can cause some of us to cringe.
Is this somehow a reflection of how poor our quality of education has become that some people don’t know the spelling of the word “Cebu” or the word “University”? Or this is a reflection of how poor the quality of our craft or dedication to our job has become because some people actually saw those errors but didn’t bother, or couldn’t be bothered, to correct them anymore.
Like we said, this small blunder is indeed a laughing matter --something we can definitely see the humor in-- but it is also something that should call the attention of people to certain issues.