Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

The Victorians set their subbing errors in stone

Anyone wanting to take us back to the solid Victorian values of the three “R”s in education should take pause. If you take a turn round the duck pond in Bath’s delightful Victoria Park, you’ll come across this handsome piece of Victorian sculpture – an urn commemorating the anniversary of the opening of the park […]

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Journalism student assessment: error round-up

Just how bad can journalism student assessment work be, in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation and general accuracy? The answer: pretty bad. Let’s have a look at some of the most common (certainly the most noticeable) problems with student assessment work this year. Apostrophes No student, absolutely none, has the remotest clue how to use […]

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

Accuracy level of Guardian now a major concern for readers

My first reaction on seeing this Guardian media headline –  “Literacy level of recruits now a major concern for media, report finds” – was: I know – I’ve said it myself often enough. But then I read the story. The story says absolutely nothing about general literacy.  It makes the following points: The industry needs more […]

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Why newspapers still need sub-editors #2

A really nice example of an “elephant in the living room” typo, from Bill Bennett’s Knowledge Workers’ blog. As with investigative journalists, you’ll miss the sub-editors when we’re gone. Won’t stop them getting rid of us though…

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Financial Times sub-editing error

There’s more to sub-editing than shuffling commas around and checking spelling (vital, obviously, though these things are). And it’s something that it seems the subs at the otherwise admirable Financial Times seem to have forgotten yesterday. Bear with me – digression first. I find these days there’s a tendency for people to use proverbs, idioms […]

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Independent cuts sub-editors – and it shows

Apparently desk editors at the Independent are to take on subbing duties at the paper, according to a Guardian story from April 1. That’s the sort of thing that should be an April Fool’s Day joke – but I found out it wasn’t when I was unlucky enough to buy a copy of the Indie on Easter Saturday […]

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Young people write in txtspk – shock

Via the Communicators in Business web site – a link to a government report that finds young people leave school or college minus key everyday learnings such as how to write in real English rather than SMS speak, or how to take a phone message: The report finds that although many schools, colleges and universities […]