Ed, I like your idea.  I do submit corrections to Dick on occasion, never knowing if someone else has beat me to it.  I'd be glad to "take a letter" and work on the songs I know or can research within that letter.

Or maybe there could be a permathread started where folks could post the name of any song that they have more or less definitively corrected in the DT.  ( I mean, at least checked formal sheet music or liner notes and corrected spelling and major punctuation errors, as well as authorship attributions.)  That way, we could check that thread before spending time reinventing the wheel.

As Joe said, it's important when we post a song, to indicate how authoritative a source we got it from (how certain we are of its correctness).  This is especially important when authorship is known.

Important caveat:  When trying to acknowledge a song's author, please don't assume that the singer who recorded it wrote it, no matter how prolific a songwriter that artist (e.g., Bryan Bowers) may be!

Sean, (Unless you have original sheet published by the original author, or unless you are submitting "Version as recorded by xxxx", then who really is to say that it's incorrect?)  Well, sometimes we get lyrics from a recording by the songwriter (who enunciates clearly).  There are other cases where it's just really clear that the lyrics have been "mondegreened"  (especially when they make no sense, while the way the song is usually sung does make sense).  Still, we can say what our source was.

Murray, one other source of "lyric drift" is "covers" by artists who like to stylize a song and make it their own.  Janis Joplin's version of "Bobby McGee" is a notable case in point.  Sinatra did that a lot, and many jazz singers do it, too.

And, yes, Malcolm, your point about checking the original thread in its entirety before harvesting is also well taken.  An ounce of prevention, as it were.

Genie

Mark, "Nitpicking" -- that's what monkeys do for each other, isn't it?