General Chat

I wonder whether articles are still proof read?

The following is the penultimate paragraph in an internet news article regarding comments made by a doctor about WA's internal border closures:

'During Hitler’s dictatorship Germany made increasing territorial demands, eventually invading and seizing numerous countries across Europe, beginning in Australia in 1938'

The link to the actual item, for some context, is here:

https://tinyurl.com/y7ay3zdc

A real schoolboy blooper, methinks. :-D :-D :-D

He sure had big ideas, young Adolf!

If he had invaded here first it might have given him second thoughts about invading anywhere else.

That really would have been liebensraum!

:-D :-D :-D

Allan .............

Not much printed matter is proofread by humans these days. They rely on the various grammar programmes, such as Spell Check.

Hence "Austr" was believed by the computer to be Australia, and no real person saw the error.

I used to be an Author's Editor for my colleagues in the Botanical Garden, on anything they wanted to publish. Both journals and book publishers used to have copy editors and proof readers, so there were 3 or 4 levels of checking.

By the time I retired in 2000, I was acting as Author's Editor on a book our Director was writing, then as Copy Editor for the publishing company because they didn't do that any more, and then as Proof Reader for them, same reason.

It was fairly easy to be an Author's Editor, relying on my education at Grammar School in England back in the 50s,anyone who went through those English Grammar lessons would be able to do without too much trouble! But the other 2 really need some specialist training, especially if the Copy Editor also has to plan the arrangement of chapters, placing of illustrations, etc. There's all kinds of signs to write on a manuscript to mark "hyphen", new paragraph, double spacing, etc etc.

I had a Copy Editor's manual sitting at my left hand, and always had to refer to it!

It really drives me crazy these days, I seem to spot all the mistakes :-(

Our local newspaper is going through a phase where they are reversing the order of 2 to 4 words in a sentence ........... eg, he not will be attending. :-P

Apparantly, grammer & spilling are regaining there wrightful plaice in some junor skools. (Pudsey Ryan.)

Noticed in the headlines running along the bottom during the corona virus update yesterday that 'lock-down's would be easing to enable education to restart'.
Looks like the use of apostrophes would be a good place to start!
'

I agree, Susie. There was a 30 or so year gap when grammar, punctuation and spelling were thought not important, because they interfered with children's imagination!!

During that time, whether or not you were taught grammar depended entirely on how important your teacher thought it was. My two sons were lucky in having an "old-fashioned" teacher and both write good english. So do my granddaughters, who went to a primary school where it was considered important.

My younger son, job-hunting in the early 80's, was told after he had been accepted, that the 5 people who were short-listed for interview were all those who had written a proper letter of application.

Some question to ask of Morrison ( or Johnson for that matter)

https://theaimn.com/so-how-fascist-is-australia-right-now/

I thought this thread was about auto correction and grammar.

I know Morrison is still prime minister of Australia but the above link is to a 5 year old article.

Austria ?

I thought citing Australia as a band of fascist brothers was a bit of a blooper as well.

It is a common error of the liberal left to confuse the many faceted aims of "the right" with fascism when they are often as committed to democracy as any socialist. Rees-Mogg's defeat in the Commons this week and the decline of Trumpism make that clear enough.

The problem with all the mistakes we see in the media and in publishing, whether that be fiction or non-fiction, light or very serious books and journals is that many, if not most, publishers decided at some point in the 1990s that Copy Editors and especially Proff Readers were an unnecessary expense.

It might have been a result of the 1988 recession, which was pretty bad over here, and companies were definitely in trouble.

It was also of course around that time that computers were really replacing word processors which had replaced typewriters, and Spell Check arrived.

Wonderful! Replace proof readers with the automatic spell check, no need to pay a human being to do the job.

That was I think the cause of all these publishing errors, there are still people around who could well do the job just because there are people who love the nitty gritty of English Grammar.


As for Apostrophes, there is, or used to be, an Apostrophes Society dedicated to the correct placement of the apostrophe ........... they would go around correcting signs, writing to newspapers, etc etc.

After reading that piece from Rollo, perhaps Hitler DID invade Australia. It would certainly have to be done via boats ;-)

Well, you can be sure that Pantsdown is not one of a kind judging from those following him Rollo.

Yea gods I find it hard to name a good politician at the moment. :-S

It has been difficult to find a good politician at any time :-0

I believe the Apostrophe Society gave up several years ago as just too many to try to correct. My friend who was a school teacher used to carry a red pen in her bag and sneakily alter all the incorrect signs she saw - she never got caught!
The best one I saw was on some sparkly earrings described as D'Amonty! Had to read it twice to understand what it meant!

Cornish Susie .......... I love that one!!

I also had to read it twice :-D

'The English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts'. (George Orwell in 'Politics and the English Language'.)

Today, I came across a site which was posted by a university, academic stuff.

There I read something that started "Dr Blah de Blah has wrote a paper about......!.