Department of Education misspells name in tweet, then misspells the apology tweet

It's not just the White House that seems to have a problem with spelling. Someone at the U.S. Education Department, now led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, does, too.

At 8:45 on Sunday morning, the department's official Twitter account misspelled the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, a black sociologist, historian, civil rights activist and co-founder of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the United States. DuBois was misspelled as DeBois - an error that might be understandable from a young student, but the U.S. Education Department?

Hours after the tweet was posted — and after the error was lampooned by a number of people on Twitter, it was corrected, with an apology:

 

Screen capture by Washington Post

The department fixed that tweet quickly, changing “apologizes” for “apologies.”

The original tweet was also re-tweeted, with DuBois’ name spelled correctly.

It wasn't the first embarrassing spelling error of the young Trump administration. A recent White House list of 78 terrorist attacks that it said the media had deliberately "underreported" was riddled with errors, explained by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank like this:

"The list didn't expose anything new about terrorist attacks, but it did reveal a previously underreported assault by the Trump administration on the conventions of written English."

Earlier this month, Trump talked about black abolitionist Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive - at least if Trump's tenses were to be taken literally:

"Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice."

Douglass, an African-American social reformer and statesman, died Feb. 20, 1895.

This story was originally published February 12, 2017 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Department of Education misspells name in tweet, then misspells the apology tweet."