AFR Illiteracy

From a brief flick through one edition of the Australian Financial Review this week the following emerged:

1.'if wins the election'??

The commas round 'from time to time' are odd as well.

2. If the price of iron ore fell to US$1.20, we really would be in trouble.

3. The truth is, if the iron ore price fell to US$1.20, we really might want to CUE the violins.

4. Let's hope that the ups really are multiple and that there is only a singular down (or none at all, ideally).

5. Maybe Romney does speak ungrammatically - or maybe this is sloppily edited.

6. Shouldn't the arrangements be plural?

7. Shouldn't 'half a percentage point' be singular?

8. 'The' NSW?

9. Yes, put the impact in a box and close the lid.

10. Some of whose expansion plans?

So Left Wing They Even Challenge Traditional Spelling

From The Australian

To Be or To Be Be

From The Australian

Captions

I'm more than usually baffled by editorial mistakes when they appear in captions. These are such small pieces of text that it seems especially surprising that errors are missed by editors:


1. This is from 'Good Living Street' by Tim Bonyhady - the apostrophe suggests there was a phenomenon called 'the Mahler'

2. These are from the Fitzwilliam Museum's recent exhibition of Chinese tomb contents.

a. 'he may BE one of the nomads'

 b. 'on the outer circle' is the start of a new sentence, which suggests a capital 'o' might be in order; 'going into a big mountain AND seeing' might be better than 'going into a big mountain an seeing'

Of and It and the Small Change of Language

The usual advice to savers is 'look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. The Australian Financial Review might do well to adjust that adage to its copy editing activities (or lack thereof) - 'look after the little words and the big ones will take care of themselves' (or, more realistically, 'look after the little words and look after the big ones too'):

Misplaced Inverted Commas

The inverted commas around 'fine' are just insulting:

I mean what can they possibly signify other than 'so-called' - 'yeah, all right, some people call these people 'fine', but really they're paedophiles.' Can that really be what the Australian is trying to say?

The Struggle Continues

Out in Yass, someone's inadequate education leaves them defeated before simple words like 'delight' and 'yolk':

Thank heavens for that 'crusade' the Prime Minister's been on about. Unfortunate choice of words, but things clearly need improving in our schools.

How is this Still Possible?

On the BBC website, despite the existence of spellcheck, someone still manages to spell 'receive' wrong: