Ergonomic Post

@r_marce has pointed out this mistake in the Australian Financial Review, which he has kindly posted sideways, ensuring readers' improve their neck flexibility - or possibly it's just me being stupid and it's the right way round for everybody else.

This Has Got to Stop

The word is definitely 'definitely'. Everywhere I look, it is becoming 'definately', but it is definitely not 'definately'; it is definitely. It definitely is:

They Usually Go in Pairs

Either 'the glove's off'' or 'the gloves are off'':

The Worse for Wear

It was claimed this morning on ABC television that the new Speaker of the Australian Parliament has a tendency to be tired and emotional quite early in the morning. It does seem to me, judging by this article, with its peculiarly isolated sentence beginning, 'But the ...' in the third column, that the sub may have been in a similar state:

There Should Be a Law Against It

Surely they're protected (and anyway, where do they get them in Yass, which is where I saw this):

Wait for Me

A former BBC correspondent called Nick Bryant wrote the Diary in the Australian version of the Spectator last week. As well as committing the sin of repeating one of his own jokes without a hint of self-deprecation:

 he also seems unable to tell the difference between 'wait for' and 'await', which could be used beside 'for' in the sentence he has written, but only with a comma after it:

Speaking Ill of the Dead

Many unpleasant things have been written about Peter Roebuck since he killed himself the other day, but surely it is scurrilous slander to suggest he bought his skills:

A Ha'porth of Tar

I really wanted to enjoy the new novel called The Night Circus. Unfortunately, I kept being distracted by bad editing. For instance, in this extract:

what would it have taken to rewrite it thus:

'The magician scans the office, a stack of letters in one hand, a black velvet cape lined with shockingly white silk cascading behind him. He expects to see a paper-wrapped box or crate,'

Thus would have been avoided the confusing - and distracting - impression that the cape is expecting something.

So much time and effort goes into the writing of a novel; surely it is worth putting in that last bit of effort, to make sure it reads smoothly. And yet so often contemporary novels seem to miss out at this crucial stage.

Surprising News and Inaccuracy at the Sydney Morning Herald

 I thought Andrew Wilkie was opposed to heavy gambling and yet he is thinking of placing $1 on all poker machines - how much is that going to cost him:

 As for Griffith being 'highbrow', I think that it would be more accurate to say that there would be a tight contest between the suburbs of O'Connor and Ainslie to gain that honour: