Wednesday 15 July 2009

Can you believe, they put a man on the moon?

Seems the Telegraph has given up all pretence of being a newspaper with journalists and resorted to a 'you decide' text-question style nonsense.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5780272/Moon-landing-anniversary-10-reasons-the-Apollo-landings-were-faked.html

Apparently the moon landings were all fake and the Telegraph has no arguments against this.

Monday 15 June 2009

Hail to the morgue, mortuary is dead

Such a passing for a fine English word

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5533991/Polish-woman-wakes-up-in-morgue.html

Thursday 11 June 2009

North of the border?

Looks like the Telegraph is for English (and maybe Welsh?) only with the condescending "Scottish news and comment

Full coverage from the Telegraph's team north of the border."

It's a wee land to the north of the suburbs I guess.

What next, "overseas news from Northern Ireland" (which doesn't seem to have its own section anyway)?

Doubles all round

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/5498481/Tube-strike-commuters-threatened-with-further-action.html

The usual double paragraph:

Amid fears the dispute would lead to England’s World Cup qualifier against Andorra being postponed, London Underground was able to run the Jubilee and Metropolitan Lines to Wembley Park, the station serving the stadium.

Amid fears that the dispute would lead to the postponement of England’s World Cup qualifier against Andorra, London Underground was able to run both the Jubilee and Metropolitan Lines to Wembley Park, the station serving the stadium. London Overground services were also running to Wembley Central. Nevertheless fans were asked not to rely on public transport alone to get to and from the match and to allow extra time for their journey.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

Railway signs and posts

A certain paper is referenced in that venerable satirical journal Private Eye as the Gruaniad as for years it had a love affair with typos and misprints. As a taker (reader is far too low a word for such a publication) of the self-styled 'Britain's best' quality paper, the Daily Telegraph, and its sister paper the Sunday Telegraph, I along with fellow takers could laugh into my marmalade with smug self-satisfaction that it truly was a 'quality' paper and the superior being.

Alas, those years have gone the way of private banks and the Hamster Dance as the new and celebrity keyword-optimised eTelegraph takes typos into a new generation. At least the Grauniad had claims of right-wing saboteurs bent on making its harridan-screech content easily dismissible, but the same can't be said of the DT.

So to this blog. Why do I care? I don't know, but I am a trained subeditor and a long-time reader who has followed their editorial complaints procedure to report faults to no avail. So it was that after several error spots, this is the article that finally prompted me to create this blog.

Couple clearing attic...

Minor typos, such as "every where" in para 10, "literally" as if the word still has meaning, switching from 1970s to 1980's, the random peppering of quote marks, and you could argue it would hardly be worth the effort to change. But phrases like "They used lot", presumably not in the Biblical sense, the neologism "memoabilia" and the missing paragraph between paras 2 and 3, so that it seems like a train stowed the boards itself, that brings this article to the height of incoherent rubbish.

Are there worse things in the world than typos and poor subbing? Yes. Do they get people as annoyed? No. There's no excuse in this age of word processors and presumably keen staff who would make subeditors. There's no bitterness here by the way, I'm happy in my job, but there's nothing like the internet for anonymous gripes on other people's errors. No doubt including my own.

If you find some teleble errors in the Telegraph, do let me know and we can name and shame here.