Today’s Tampa Bay Times has an article about Joe Biden’s upcoming town hall with undecided voters at the Pérez Art Museum. I was surprised to see that the newspaper misspelled the museum’s name as Peréz.

Should be Pérez, not Peréz. Duh.

I was surprised for two reasons. First, the museum is a major Tampa cultural institution, and the city’s hometown newspaper should be able to spell its name properly. For crying out loud, they could have checked Wikipedia if they weren’t sure. You can see the name of the museum in both the text and the illustration of the Wikipedia entry, accent mark neatly in place.

Second, the misplaced accent mark is such an obvious Spanish mistake that someone at the the Tampa Bay Times should have caught it. As any Spanish teacher will tell you, Spanish words that end in a consonant, including z, are normally stressed on the last syllable. The accent mark on Pérez indicates an exception to this rule: the name is pronounced PErez, not peREZ. In other words, NO Spanish word that ends with z will ever have an accent mark on its final syllable.

Please be more careful, TBT.