Proofreading is a dying art
Proofreading is a dying art, wouldn’t you say? I should say that I am no expert at grammer or spelling and use the tools available to ensure I don’t make too many mistakes but it’s easy to miss the occasional one. In English 99.9%[1] of the time you can get away with it since its such a flexible language (and a bastard to learn), but every now and then you can get some real howlers.
Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter
It took two or three readings before the editor realized that what he was reading was impossible!!! They put in a correction the next day.
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
Really? Ya think?
Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Now that’s taking things a bit far!
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
What a guy!
Miners Refuse to Work after Death
No-good-for-nothing’ lazy so-and-so’s!
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
See if that works any better than a fair trial!
War Dims Hope for Peace
I can see where it might have that effect!
If Strike Isn’t Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
Ya think?!
Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
Who would have thought!
Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
They may be on to something!
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
You mean there’s something stronger than duct tape?
Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
He probably IS the battery charge!
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Quantity is always better than quality.
[1] Fake scientific reference
SBML
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February 11, 2011 at 15:22 -
I once read a somewhat pompous book review which ended, “An interesting monograph somewhat let down by the quality of the poofreading”.
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February 11, 2011 at 15:30 -
I think some of those are, perhaps, deliberate.
Along with:
Girls’ schools still offering `something special’ – head[Tiger] Woods stars year with 69 and trails by 5 strokes
Hooker overcomes illness, slaps Beaver 64-57
Milliband forced to hand job to Balls [snigger]
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February 11, 2011 at 15:52 -
<norant>
Rant is turned off. Please activate rant to see a diatribe on copy-editing and proof-reading.
</norant>Good examples, SBML. Don’t know about the veterinarian ; what the panda likely needed was a panderer.
ΠΞ
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February 11, 2011 at 16:07 -
“I should say that I am no expert at grammEr or spelling and use the tools available to ensure I don’t make too many mistakes but it’s easy to miss the occasional one.”
I trust that one was deliberate? – Only joking!! If it makes you feel any better, I remember a job advert posted by Wisbech Grammer School in our local paper a few years back. How the hell did that one get printed??
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February 11, 2011 at 16:14 -
I was going to put in “its” as well!
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February 11, 2011 at 17:57 -
Well you did (the other way around): “…since its such a flexible…”
Most of the problems with sense began with the american habit of “verbing”, now so widespread that it’s become the norm.
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February 11, 2011 at 20:36
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February 11, 2011 at 16:29 -
The Age had one just over a year ago which read “Toddler survives lethal snake bite”, though the article never explained how it was both lethal and survivable at the same time. The chickenshits quietly changed it and now it just reads, “Toddler survives snake bite” but someone
got a screen grab of the original in all it’s nonsensical glory.Incidentally, this was a month after the Sydney Morning Herald had written that a tiger snake had been “arrested” – their word, not mine – on South Melbourne beach on Christmas Day. Arrested a snake? I’d have paid good money to watch while they tried to handcuff the bastard.
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February 11, 2011 at 16:51 -
I check all my posts for typos ad nauseum and yet, even though I am fanatical about it, I still notice some I missed after publishing the post!
I filled in a passport form today and got my own surname wrong.
I put it down to senility…
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February 11, 2011 at 17:49 -
An offtopic, I spotted your reference to amrad. I’m a GW4, although we’d be in the doghouse if I started a long QSO on here. I’ll go on to your blog if it doesn’t need a Blogger account to log on.
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February 11, 2011 at 16:59 -
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February 11, 2011 at 20:06 -
I spoke to somebody years ago who remembered when it happened. He reckoned it was deliberately done to boost morale with a laugh at a low point in WW2.
They also had a cartoon, Jane, where the amount of clothing (or lack of) was used to cheer up the troops.-
February 11, 2011 at 21:56 -
Well, clothes were rationed at the time.
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February 11, 2011 at 17:28 -
fortunatly I never make misteak’s
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February 11, 2011 at 17:44 -
Diocles, it is known as cognitive dissonance, being blind to your own screaming errors.
I re-read old blogposts of mine and squirm at the typos sometimes.
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February 11, 2011 at 18:14 -
I’ve noticed two things on this subject matter that still mystify me.
One is, I must be getting old because someone changed the rules of language and I never learned the new rules. The biggest case in point of this is the use of the word “loose” for “lose” and the most rabid ranters calling someone a “looser” instead of a “loser”.
Is substituting “looser” for “loser” some kind of youthful slang these days and I simply don’t know about it?
The other has to do with typing emails or postings while sitting online and in the background, the entire text keeps being “saved” automatically by the good network provider of the email or posting engine – and in the course of it, it automatically, without my intervention, keeps “proofreading” it, running everything through a grammar/spelling checker and changing the words automatically, behind my back.
So when I get ready to hit send or post, if I go back, then I find words changed into closely spelled words but of entirely different meaning and incorrect within the context of what I just typed.
I notice that a lot in fact and put some of it down to these automatic grammar/spell checkers working in the background while it’s constantly saving drafts and correcting/re-writing individual words for me and very often, with incorrect results.
I’d like to think that is how a “loser” became a “looser”, but for that example I see to much of it everywhere online and assume that must be a generational thing, something to do with a NewSpeak being introduced and me too old to have learned the new terminology.
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February 11, 2011 at 21:13 -
Is substituting “looser” for “loser” some kind of youthful slang these days and I simply don’t know about it?
No. It’s people not knowing the difference between lose (to not win, to misplace) with loose (slack, unable to differentate(sp) between what you wanted to type with what you actually did.)
Anyone who can’t use their grandma checker normally types loose, whether it’s correct or not. And their great Aunt fails to point out their illiteracy.
HTH. HAND. TLA, ETLA.
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February 11, 2011 at 21:22 -
p.s I blaaaaame txt spk.
Txt (did I get the capitali(sz)ation correct?) spk normally omits the bowels. (And a great deal of other education. That B was deliberate.)
Since the difference between missing something and releasing it depends on a single ‘o’, and the illliterateri aren’t using vowels, is there really any difference?
Putting in the scare quotes (as I was *so tempted* to do) in the above is left to the Student. Who will (not) be paying 9K/pa for their ‘floristry in imaginative dance’ degree. For which they will be totally unqualified for the job in Mickey D’s where’ll they’ll end up.
Sorry. That was a Rant. Thanks for putting up my first comment.
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February 11, 2011 at 21:44 -
Years ago there was a bar — you couldn’t really call it a pub — at the top of a lane that ran north from Fleet-street alongside the Express building (opposite No. 85) ; I recall seeing on a bulkhead there some kind of greeting card from the Telegraph ‘poof-reeders’. The eighties : those were the days.
ΠΞ
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February 12, 2011 at 06:45 -
Was that not the Cheshire Cheese, Pericles? Left hand side of the lane alongside the old Express building? Great place with a cafe upstairs…..bread pudding and steaming mugs of tea.
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February 12, 2011 at 20:46 -
Well, now you force me to investigate. Loath to go down to London for the purpose I activated Google Erf — a somewhat laborious process on my now ageing computer — and ‘landed’, à la Superman, at the northern end of what I’m reminded is Shoe-lane. The photograph shewed a vaguely familiar location and the entrance to a place of restitution by the name ‘alibi’ ; yes, all lower-case, somewhat inevitably. Must say, I don’t recall the Addison-Lee taxi but undoubtedly that’s a later arrival on stage.
“Mirroring the smartly-tailored clientèle pouring in from the surrounding offices, …” I read in the ‘viewlondon’ review of ‘alibi’, realizing immediately that this could not have been the place to which we had resorted … unless, peut-être, recently acquired management had wisely decided to excluded representatives of R.E.(Finance).
The (Ye) Olde Cheshire Cheese is the other side of the Telegraph Building. We went there too occasionally but it was not the one I had in mind.
Good to see you up and about, although 0645 is a bit early. (There ought to be a convention that all times on the Internet be given in Zulu — that’s G.M.T. to those unfamiliar — as in aviation.)
ΠΞ
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February 11, 2011 at 22:59 -
Here’s a good illustration of just how hard Ingrish is for those rearning it as a foleign rangrage.
“By comparison, Bárdarbunga dwarves the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, …” — Telegraph article this evening.
Imagine yourself a Chinese student having to collect that sentence. Ah, you say, simpoor : “Bárdarbunga dwarves LIVE IN the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, …”
ΠΞ
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February 12, 2011 at 11:14 -
This over at Max Farquar nearly caused me to choke on my mead
Hope the link works
http://www.maxfarquar.com/search?updated-max=2011-02-08T15:39:00Z&max-results=10-
February 12, 2011 at 11:52 -
Gildas that’s been done you fool!
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