3 drafts in one article!

This article's been online about 18 hours now and hasn't been updated, so I thought I'd share it.

In an article with a very long title news.com.au reports that "Second woman claims affair as police to charge Tiger Woods over car crash."

Which is all well and good except that the story is told about 3 times.

Early in the article we learn that:

"He could be fined $US164 ($179) and lose four points off his licence."

A few paragraphs on the article reveals that:

"He could be fined $US164 ($179) and lose four points off his licence."

Similarly an early paragraph which says:

"The investigation has determined that Mr Woods is at fault in the crash. This afternoon the FHP is in the process of issuing a uniform citation of careless driving to Mr Woods," Williams said.

is repeated only slightly differently further on as:

"The investigation has determined that Mr Woods is at fault in the crash. This afternoon the FHP is in the process of issuing a uniform citation of careless driving to Mr Woods," Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) area commander Major Cindy Williams said.

And if you weren't confused enough by all that, a triple whammy hits you with:

Another spokeswoman, Kim Montes said was [sic] no other charges would be laid.

and later:

Another FHP spokeswoman, Kim Montes, said no other charges would be laid against Woods or anyone else.

and later still:

Ms Montes said no further action would be taken against Woods over the accident.

There's more like that - as I said the same story told three times almost word for word - and no human or computer picked it up.

And I note that when I started this blog noone was talking loudly about the public paying for online news content. While there may be a case for that, I think they have to pull their socks up a bit first as this is hardly a ringing endorsement of good journalism or site management that would encourage any punter to part with their money.

You don't need to be Einstein, so this is merely
but it shouldn't happen anyway.

Original article, in triplicate, can be found here.

Can Computers Really Replace Journalists?

I suspect this error was made by a computer rather than a human.

Referring to Tokyo airport the interviewee is quoted as saying: "...it's 65km out, by bus it's about one.five hours, by taxi it can cost anything up to $300."

Obviously the interviewee actually spoke the words "one point five hours" or "one and a half hours", which are commonly written as 1.5 hours. Simple mistake - for a computer.

This error appeared in this article about a Qantas nightmare.

It's

So let's hope more real-life flesh-and-blood journalists get a crack at writing articles in future.

Reverse engineering the thesaurus.

This report is about technically correct yet poor English which should have been rooted out in school. So ultimate blame for the following rests with the Education Department.

This SMH article says

"Mr Penman has denied the claim and is pondering legal action of his own..."

Pondering? Hmmm, yes and no, but mainly no.

It appears that the thesaurus chose this word, like a very subtle reminder of that Friends episode where Joey uses a thesaurus to translate "They're warm, nice people with big hearts" into "They're humid, pre-possessing homosapiens with full-sized aortic pumps". This isn't exactly how 'pondering' should be used either.

If I reverse engineer "pondering" using my own thesaurus there are many more suitable alternatives for a weighty issue such as legal action, such as "considering", "contemplating", "deliberating" or even "thinking about".

For fluffier issues such as what colour to paint the wall, "pondering" is indeed a reasonable choice, along with "wondering", "mulling", "musing" and the universal "thinking about".

English needs to change with the times and adapt, and our professional media lead this, but this fancy word just made it hard to read and is thus

The article that shouldn't have been at all.

This article on The Advertiser's "Adelaide Now" site has 107 words which should never have been published.

The whole article is a shocker as it reports "A PERSON has been struck down and killed by a train at Bowden...TransAdelaide later said it believed the death to be suicide"... err, which is when the entire article should have been deleted (or a seriously new angle found).

It was published at 9.45pm, possibly from a mobile device as there is a spelling error, so I guess this won't appear in the print edition tomorrow. Let's see.

This is a definite


UPDATE:
This article appeared in the following day's print edition but without mention of a suicide.
Meanwhile on the website, by next morning the comments section had been removed.

Rewritten but not deleted.

This wasn't the type of error I had in mind when I started this blog, but it's a simple editing error which, if computers can't spot it, at least a human could (or vice versa).

In this article about two boats, this paragraph:

Their boat, carrying more than 250 ethnic Tamils, was intercepted last weekend by the Indonesian navy en route to Australia and taken to the Javanese city of Merak.

was followed closely by this paragraph:

The boat had been intercepted by the Indonesian navy en route to Australia and taken to the Javanese port city of Merak.

One would guess that the 2nd paragraph was copied-and-pasted then rewritten as the first and someone forgot to delete the original, as the repeated words highlighted in bold make up over 80% of the 2nd paragraph.

Could happen to anyone on a deadline - so it's

October Record!

This is another heartbeat update as we pass the halfway mark of October, to report that I haven't found ANY grammatical errors in the Australian media whatsoever this month! Not a single one! This is fantastic!

I know I wasn't dreaming all those errors in the past, but I feel that I've awoken to a new day of easy and pleasurable reading.

So in this case, an empty blog is a good blog!

32-year ambiguity

SMH reported "Polanski faces weeks in jail before an appeal against his arrest over a 32-year statutory rape charge is heard in court".

OK, so we know this refers to a charge from 32 years ago, or a 32 year old charge. But the way it was written was
and made me look twice. I don't think it's technically correct - at least not in Australia.

No news is good news.

This is a "heartbeat" placeholder to say that this is blog is not dead or abandoned - but for the last two days I have found NO errors on any Australian media web sites! That's a real turn around - especially for my fairfax reading! Great stuff! :)

I noticed that a news.com.au web site had some spelling errors in one article which obviously missed the spell checker, but that didn't affect the quality of the journalism so I won't blog it.

Note that I am not actively seeking out errors - just noting the ones that crop up in my natural daily reading.

Regards,
Troy

Top article marred by half an error.

This has the makings of one of the top articles of the week: home grown journalism, about a local player, on the global scene, in an exotic location, with a hint of vice...and so it rivetingly continues.

Then suddenly an error leaps out of this SMH article: "Crown Melco ... assisted Amax raise $HK2 billion"
Huh? There’s at least a missing “in” + “ing” here. Oh, and I've lost my place. Train of thought gone too. Now where was I?

However, the same article in The Age is correct with: "Crown Melco ... helped Amax raise $HK2 billion".
So if you habitually read both papers it's merely half



Check out the SMH article with error here: http://www.smh.com.au/business/macaus-seedy-casino-war-turns-to-gold-20090921-fyn5.html
and the correct Age article here: http://www.theage.com.au/business/hard-men-reign-in-packers-dream-city-20090921-fym8.html

SMH homophones?

In this article, the journalist has confused the homophones “two” and “to”. If you grow up speaking English this mistake is a real no-no.

The “the high cost of connecting two lines” should of course be “the high cost of connecting to lines” – unless the journalist meant something completely different in which case the whole sentence should have been written differently. Sigh. It shouldn’t be this hard to read the paper.

This is at the very least rather


Read it for yourself here: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/george-in-a-spin-over-noisy-wind-power-x2026-20090920-fwsl.html

SMH Plural Misuse

This article by SMH reports that “Her skins and nails returned” in reference to the woman’s own skin and fingernails.

Like fingernails on a blackboard that’s a jarring example of English-as-a-second-language mistake. Unless talking about a hunter or a lizard, a native English speaker wouldn’t refer to skins in the plural.

This is:


Read it for yourself here: http://www.smh.com.au/world/out-of-the-darkness-after-nine-long-years-20090919-fw4s.html