50 posts tagged “language”

Yay, the compose screen! It only took nine hours for it to come up, rather than 16 since the blackout before.
   Here’s something else I wanted to share, before I realized that these screens only come up for a few minutes before they die again.
   About 10 years ago, I had a student called Rochelle Stewart, who was a very digilent worker. I hope she has done well. Every time I see City Life journalist Rachelle Stewart’s byline, I keep muddling them up.
   I have never met this R. Stewart, but she might be the hardest working woman in the community newspapers in this city. You see her byline a lot in her newspaper, and I would say if she ever quit, City Life would disappear.
   If you have the output of Rachelle Stewart, it is only natural that one would make the odd mistake. I know I would. And I should note that the ones she made below are acceptable when copy comes in at any publication—we have received far worse here.
   And with City Life’s foreign owners, who are much larger, there must be staff there who could catch them, because that is what they are there for.
   But no. I don’t think, in fact, any of these should have made it to print.
   Remember, these are the folks that had a ‘Melborne Cup’ (sic) special in 2008, where you could join the ‘Winners Cirlce’ (sic). And I really wanted to read this ‘Did you know?’ feel-good piece by Ms Stewart in the November 11 edition, but I kept getting distracted. I had to get out the pen:

   I have not marked some things that would be considered errors at JY&A Media but might be right based on City Life’s house style.
   I might be wrong, but I heard their subs are in Australia, so there is little wonder they do not know the correct spellings of our suburbs and streets. I can barely spell some of the Australian place names, though I can do Woomera and any place a car was named after.
   Of course, this probably means this paper won’t be endorsing my mayoral run because I am a smart-arse.

On Google News yesterday (during the Vox blackout):

   Nigeria: the Country might have slipped, but I wonder where Nigeria: the Movie is, and Nigeria: the Flame Thrower (the kids love that one).
   Apparently, we topped this index, which is nice to know. I wonder if Bill English’s housing allowances made it into the survey period.

Can someone please explain this first paragraph on the Think Spain site?

Clocks go back an hour this weekend, in the early hours of Sunday morning, as Europe says goodbye to British Summer Time and adopts daylight saving time (Greenwich Mean Time).

   This makes no sense.
   1. Only the UK is on British Summer Time in Europe, I thought.
   2. British Summer Time and daylight saving time are the same thing, aren’t they?
   3. Daylight saving time and Greenwich Mean Time are not the same thing.
   Or has the usage of these terms changed since I learned them?

Remember last year when I took the mickey out of these in the City Life newspaper?

   The first one is obvious: Melbourne is misspelt. The second one is also obvious: Circle is misspelt, there’s a missing apostrophe for the possessive, and capitalizing a definite article is technically incorrect. I remember we had a bit of fun with this as they were in huge letters, the former across the top of a tabloid-sized page.
   The question one has to pose is: did they get it right in 2009? Let’s see: Well, that’s a good start. Someone hired a proofreader at long last. Or turned the spellcheck on.
   Let’s see how the second one went: One fewer error, but still two to go. Note the prize money has reduced to a recessionary $150 this time around. The text, which also has a few issues (based around consistency of English usage), remains the same as last year.
   Any bets on the 2010 edition? Will the apostrophe for Winners’ be there? Or is there only one winner, in which case it’s Winner’s? I remain none the wiser.

We were chatting about non-US actors adopting American accents on Jaklumen’s blog and I thought of several American actors who do pretty good English accents.
   First up, Rénée Zellweger as Bridget Jones:

   Secondly, James Cromwell as HRH the Duke of Edinburgh in The Queen:

This is as disturbing as when I began to see American publications capitalize after colons in 2001 (which is generally incorrect, according to US publishing professionals I asked, though there are exceptions; it is certainly incorrect in English).
   Carbon dioxide is written out in full or with CO, followed by a subscript 2. Technically, it is incorrect to write CO2. Normally in modern typesetting, if we do not have a subscript font, we would use the superior two (²) and move it down a few points. However, surfing today, I noticed a very disturbing C02 (C-zero-two) at both Reuter and the Los Angeles Times.
   I have no idea how this came about. There is no zero in carbon dioxide. This is as bad as those weather pages that insist that the temperature is measured in coulombs (C) and not degrees Celsius (°C).

.

Carrying on from a post that Jaklumen made on his blog, I went to look for the Lucy Lawless-headed Greenpeace campaign to reduce emissions. This is Lucy Lawless as Lucy Lawless, and her accent has changed a great deal since I saw her in the Shark in the Park episode ‘Double or Quits’. It has Americanized slightly, which is no surprise since she is married to an American and has a home in LA.

Linda-Joy pointed me to this article about John Simm in The Independent:

Who on earth is John Simms? A bit embarrassing to have a typo in the headline.
   I assume he is also known to the fictional New Zealand locksmith–prime minister, ‘John Keys’, whom Dr Pita Sharples of the Māori Party has referred to from time to time.

Remember how a few weeks back, I chided Examiner.com for a poorly written review of District 9? The writer of the review told us how a chap called ‘Neill Blomcamp’ directed the film, and invented new words such as gansters, prolifigate, demonstate and permissiable. I still wonder if a prolifigate is where pro-lifers meet up.
   It looks like the site never really checks things. Its latest review is a bit better when it comes to spelling and word usage, but it still has some mistakes, such as ‘the Nazi’s outlined treatment of the Jews during WWII’ (which Nazi?). Less forgiveable, however, are the first two words which begin the review. There, I see that Neill Blomkamp’s name is now ‘Neil Bomkamp’:

Examiner writers and editors: repeat after me. Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp. Neill Blomkamp. Now, write that out 50 times on the blackboard till you get it right.

This is from the Willis Street site, and I quite like the image and the typeface choice:

   English might be my second language, but I am pretty sure there is no such word as restauranter.
   Unless there’s a new word out there for someone who builds restaurants, and that the 222 Willis Street location is prime for that construction.
   But a website with a non-existent English word, no big deal.
   I mean, it’s not as if there’s a one-storey-high sign in central Wellington with the same mistake. Aw crap.