English as a Foreign Language

I have rarely been able to resist headlines containing the phrase 'Slain Socialite', and so it was that I found myself on the Fox News site. I had picked up from somewhere the idea that Fox News does not always uphold the highest of journalistic standards, but, really, this appears to have been written by someone who has a very odd understanding of English:

Leaving aside what I would regard as the misuse of 'befuddled' and 'placate', what the hell does 'glommed' mean?

When Politics Gets Messy

My brother pointed out this, which appeared in an article about the Australian Labor Party that was published in the Guardian:

The democratic world may never have witnessed such murky political behaviour as we have seen during the last week in Australia. Even so, as far as I know, no-one has yet unbarred their holes.

Perspective

Depending on your point of view, Kevin Rudd's inability to proofread his own letter of resignation may support the argument that he is unfit to be Prime Minister or the argument that he should have the job back, so that he can expand his staff to include someone who can proofread things carefully:

Better than a Slap in the Face with a Wet Fish?

More of a slap in the face with a fat fist perhaps - something fat anyway:

Thank You Drng and Aptronym

It seems that Britain has a new Prime Minister and Surry Hills Library decided to use the dyslexic they hired under equal opportunity to run the publicity for their inaugural spelling bee.

At the Art Gallery of New South Wales

I can't understand what's happened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Captions on walls are things that are not rushed into overnight and yet the place is littered with captions containing errors:

Presumably that was meant to read 'and wrote a memoir'.

I'm not mad about a principal passion being 'toward' something, although that is not strictly wrong. However, 'looking for way forward' is.

Shall I be boring again and point out that commas should ideally go round in pairs - there is one missing in the above caption. It should be inserted before the word 'anticipated'. Without it, the sentence is very hard to read.

I'm sorry Mr Capon, this maddens me, because it makes me read the sentence over and over again, puzzling about why it doesn't work. Whatever Edmund Capon actually said, the sentence, for the purposes of the poster, would have read better if edited thus: "This is the great Picasso show to which we have often aspired but which we have not yet achieved in Australia". It is the 'to' which makes things difficult, because the verb 'achieve' does not fit with it. You can't say, 'to which we have not yet achieved' and yet that is how the sentence is structured - as it stands, the verb 'achieved' depends on the clause beginning with that 'to'. It won't do.

They're Building a Road Now?

Shouldn't that be passers-by, rather than by-passers:

Yet Again - Spellchecker, Where Are You When We Need You?

But's that all? This is taken from a national newspaper, forsooth:

Their Holder's What?

Cunning Swine

Instead of making sure their signs are written in good English, the people in charge of storyboards on the walk from Taronga Zoo to Balmoral Beach have placed misty sheets of plastic over any offensive bits of prose for which they are responsible, in the hope that no-one will notice - and, if they do, that they won't be able to take photographs of the mistakes. In case it is too difficult to read, I should spell this one out - a permanent sign, paid for by taxpayers, states that Japanese submarines were sighted a certain number of 'metres of the coast'. This is not some quickly dashed off memorandum; this is something designed to be read by the public for years. Why on earth didn't anyone read it carefully? Grrr:

Apostrophe Overboard

'Bradleys' might be considered adjectival and therefore exempt, but 'headlands' is not:

(Personally, I'd put a comma between 'location' and 'providing' as well, but that is a matter of taste, I suppose).

Indian Cricket

This shows that spell-check is not always entirely useless (although it does have to be used, if it is to provide any help). I suppose one should be thankful that an extra 'r' wasn't also added, sending readers screaming from visions of horrible Mr Sting:

Although There's No Need to Get Obsessive

Like this man (please let me never sit next to him at a party):

Getting it Right

An example of why one should take care with text:

Who Needs Staff

Provided you've got one qualified teacher, anything goes really:

The Real Question

What I'd really like to know, though, is whether he still thought Dick Smith would be interested, an entirely different, although possibly easier to understand, question:

Which Four Months Was That?

There was the four months since the four months ago but was that the four months that was after the four months ago or the four months that was before the four months since? Just asking:

I Think They'd Been Drinking

If the people who wrote this hadn't been drinking, why did they suggest that we spend time 'on our' parks? Would it really have taken so much more effort to write, 'on our beaches and in our parks'? I suppose it would have, if your hand was already unsteady from spending the whole day on the turps:

I Ate It

Because I love living dangerously:

What is that Comma Doing?

The comma before 'a living there', what is its function? Is it, perhaps, a kind of punctuation alternative to a drumroll:

Ebooks Are Bad Enough

Presumably an epublican is the man who fills drinks machines that sell beer and those horrible cans of premixed gin and tonic, et cetera:

What really scares me is the thought of the rise of the emocrats.

Is Consistency Enough

I suppose the argument here is that abandoning the accent on divorcé is okay, if you have already done so on fiancé -but really it would be better, I think, to include both, in order to avoid ambiguity:

A Forlorn Apostrophe

Poor little thing.

I Love This

Apostrophe Catastrophe

My Twitter friend Aptronym passed on this piece of illiteracy from the Boxing Day sales. Honestly, did no-one in the company notice?

Commas Again

Why would a meltdown spread to Australia through a series of stress tests?

Or should there, possibly, be a comma between 'Australia' and 'through'?

And are commas being rationed at the Financial Review? Surely one could have been spared, to place after 'fortnight' (and shouldn't that, ideally, be 'of', rather than 'in' in the phrase 'some aspects in the ministerial ...'?

Meanwhile, in the first sentence of this passage, there appears to have been some kind of Georges Perec (La disparition) decision, although, instead of the letter 'e', it is commas that have been targeted for ostracism, (who knows why):

Reshuffle those Words

And some who will have trouble forming a proper sentence:

Either, 'The result is there are some ministers who have too much on their plate to possibly be effective and some who ...' or 'The result is some ministers have too much on their plate to possibly be effective and some will have trouble justifying their existence'.

Great Artist, Dud Editor

I'm sad that the attention to detail shown by the featured artist in this magazine  was not copied by those in charge of the text.

Blistering Barnacles

Was the Ancients' name for it censored? Instead of a blank before the bracket, should it read *!!*#*!!, in homage to Captain Haddock:

Semi-Literate

It would have taken so little to transform this:

Wouldn't this be an improvement: 'The fire began burning last week, but late yesterday, fanned by winds gusting at up to 50km/h, it roared out of control, breaking containment lines.'

Batty Headlines

It may be just me, but the impression I get from this one is that someone's been engaging in some dubious sexual practices (what exactly is 'sandbag' a euphemism for, I wonder):

Meanwhile, this one:

even though the article to which it is connected does eventually provide an explanation for that p-word:

fails to achieve the task of a headline - to instantly let most readers know what the article is going to be about.

More of the Enemy (Ambiguity, I Mean)

Whose wife is being referred to here - Gilham's or Hills's:

Changing the opening line of the second paragraph to 'Gilham's wife, Robecca', (and yes, it appears that is how her name is spelled), would have removed any confusion.

Near Enough is Not Good Enough

'Accessed' may look a lot like 'assessed' but the words have different meanings:

Oh Dear

The most cursory bit of fact checking would have revealed that the name of the mother of Martin Amis is Hilary Ann Bardwell:

Old News

In a paper published on the Friday in question, it is not a good idea to refer to an event as happening in the future when it actually occurred on the evening before publication:

The Enemy

Unless intentional, ambiguity is the editor's enemy. This sentence would be far clearer if it were written thus: 'Opposition finance spokesman, Andrew Robb, has demanded that any government proposal to lift the borrowing cap should be presented as a stand-alone measure to Parliament' (and I think I'm right in putting those commas around Andrew Robb's name, since he is the only opposition finance spokesman in existence).

I Heart Semi-Colons

If commas are not particularly fashionable, then semi-colons are wide satin lapels teamed with purple Crimplene flares. Nevertheless, I love a well-used semi-colon. For instance, in this passage, between 'mining' and 'we' a semi-colon would be so much better than that comma:

Commas

'Less is more' is today's fashion when it comes to commas. As a consequence, they are often  left out, at times when they could be helping readers to make their way through complex sentences. In my view, this is a mistake. Commas serve many useful roles and should not be treated as optional extras.

For instance, they often act as stepping stones, helping readers to thread their way through a tangle of clauses:

a) a comma between 'forth' and 'along' would work in that way here, I think:

 b) commas around 'starting today' might give the reader a couple of places to rest and gather their thoughts here, (and can a government really be a force for the future? Surely, the future is a given; it does not respond to force):

 c) a comma between' yesterday' and 'with' in the sentence beginning 'Mr Abbott' would stop any possible confusion about whether the promise came with the NSW business function, like some kind of free gift in a packet of cereal:

 d) Again, a comma between 'reform' and 'even' would aid the reader to follow the meaning of the sentence beginning 'He skirted', in my view:

 e) I would rewrite the main paragraph here so that it read thus: "Last night, the faction's position was being finalised, ahead of the economic policy debate, which is scheduled to follow Ms Gillard's opening speech at the ALP conference this morning"

Commas also help to eliminate ambiguity. For example, had the editor placed a comma after 'platform' in the paragraph beginning 'Ms Scott', there would have been no doubt at all that it was not the platform itself that was calling for an end to mandatory detention but rather Ms Scott and her mates:

 Personally, I also think that, like their cousins, inverted commas, commas should almost always go about in twos. Thus, I would place a comma after 'so', in this passage:

and before 'if' in this one (I should also point out that 'not only' is in the wrong position):

and before 'when' in this one (and I would remove the comma and 'and' after 'billion' and replace it with that much neglected but superb piece of punctuation, the semi-colon):

Working on the same pairing policy, I would either remove the comma after 'sector' in this passage, possibly adding 'both' between the next 'sector' and the word 'had', or I would add another comma after the next occurrence of 'sector' in the piece:

Sometimes, of course, commas are redundant. It is disruptive and confusing, for example, to insert a comma that separates a verb from its subject:

'Hockey said he would look to monetary policy first and would want the RBA ...' seems to me to be perfectly fine.

I also cannot see what help the comma between 'business' and 'simplifying' is to anyone in this passage:

I would remove it and cut 'a promise to appoint', since 'promise' is really a repetition of 'pledge', and replace it with 'the appointment of a'. Here is my recast sentence: 'These included the appointment of a cabinet minister for small business and the simplification of the administration of compulsory superannuation contributions'. If you insisted on keeping 'promise', I would rewrite the sentence to read like this: 'These included promises to appoint a cabinet minister for small business and to simplify the administration of ....'