Massive Clearance

Lately, I have been collecting things from the newspapers for this blog and then running out of time to put them up, so now I'm sorting out my pictures file and tossing everything into one enormous post - what might be called a steaming heap of illiteracy:
 1. Naked flight attendants, woo hoo:

2. Leaving aside that horrid 'impacted', the use of 'less' with emissions is almost forgivable, because the editor was probably imagining a cloud of smelly gases, rather than a number of clearly defined items, but it is still wrong:

3.The Greens are rarely 'complimentary', but it's nice to see they're trying to get on with people at last:

4. 'The' theory of what? Surely just 'theory' would do here:

5. 'a her'?

6. 'Exult the culture'?

7. The article is about the misappropriation of 'headlines', rather than mini-chief executives or baby marijhuana smokers:

8. An apostrophe is needed on 'independents'

9. Why does Mr Rudd gets his own definite article now:

10. Leichhardt has a 'd' in it:

11. 'Cloud' or 'clout' - make up your mind:

12. Growing out of your brain sounds uncomfortable:

13. 'Is Labor playing politics?' or 'Labor is playing politics' - you can't have a bob each way:

14. What is 'rduse':

15.No, 'what become two decades on service' is not good English:

16. I think the problem for the Yule family is that they will be parting with their hard-earned pounds during their three-week holiday and departing with no hard-earned pounds at the end of the holiday:

17. 'The Australian conference agenda reflects the new approach THAT has been taking place elsewhere' - and isn't it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or is this some other body):

It's Not Just the Words

Sometimes copy editors should think about the pictures on a page and how the words around them relate to the pictures. For example, what is that rather depressed looking dog doing there:

 Poor creature - surely Clark never gave in?

Cleaning Up

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that 'career women' enjoy doing housework - or, at least, they prefer doing it themselves to finding that their silk clothes have been washed at 60 degrees, along with their husband's jeans. Ironing, however, is not very popular:

 If they could find some 'else', (or Elise, or Eileen, or Eleanor - or, indeed, anyone, presumably), 18 per cent would give ironing the flick, (this surprises me). Meanwhile, 70 per cent of 'high achieving' women rely on a dishwasher - whether for ironing, love or general moral support the article does not say.

Out to Lunch

When someone has gone to so much trouble, I think it is very unfair of the London Review of Books to put a typo at the beginning of line 7 :

Andrew Bolt

It does seem shocking that someone who not only deferred their degree at the University of Adelaide but 'hated study' should have caught the attention of the nation. And yet that is what the Australian would have us believe

End of an Era

It is odd that the Australian is generally considered to have an anti-Labor bias and yet the people there still haven't quite absorbed the fact that there's been a change:

Linda Burney might like to be deputy premier one day, but it's not going to happen for quite some time.

Why this Stuff Matters

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article today about a woman who was pushing her baby daughter along the street when someone drove their car onto the pavement and struck her and her child. The woman remains in hospital and no-one knows whether she will survive. The child - whose name is Eloise - suffered a broken collarbone; she is now back at home. The child's father made an appeal for more information about the accident yesterday. It is such a sad story, but what did the Sydney Morning Herald's copy editors decide to do with it? They decided to make a laughing stock of the man:

Gleeful Sadness

The first Wednesday of the month is always a day of excitement in the Absent Proof household. Only one question is on everybody's lips - namely, 'Will the editor of the Australian Literary Review manage to get through his editorial without stuffing something up?'

The answer today is, 'No.' Once again, Luke Slattery has proved himself unequal to the task. Sadly, after a dull but not unpromising start - some pretty clunking sentences, but no actual grammatical errors, for the first four paragraphs - disaster strikes:

"Khalil does not expect that the new generation to revive the heady spirit of the 1970s; rather ..." - what does that mean? What happened to the thread of thought started before the semi colon? Coherence is lost. The reader is confused. And yet we're supposed to take this publication - which proclaims that it is 'in partnership with the Group of Eight universities' - seriously.