Wonderful

I love this.

New Instagram Absentproof

I have set up an Instagram account called Absentproof. I will still, very occasionally, post here but will put most editing  mistakes I spot there, as it is quicker and easier to post things to Instagram than it is to make a blog post.

Irresistible

I have been resisting coming back to this blog for ages, but today, reading an article about the Armenian genocide in a Financial Times from early April, I found myself unable to restrain the urge to point out how much better the piece might read, had the sub-editor made a few tiny changes.

For instance, reading the passage in the photograph below, I found myself thinking, "How did the Syrian Desert wipe out his family?" If there had been commas added thus - "As a five-year-old boy, Panian endured a forced march, from his native east-central Anatolia to the Syrian Desert, that wiped out his family" - I wouldn't have been distracted:

In the passage below, I got distracted again, this time by the word "nor" - where is the "neither" it belongs with?

In the passage in my final photograph, I once again became distracted by a sentence that could easily have been better constructed. I think the sentence that begins "At Antoura" would work far better if written thus: "At Antoura, each boy was given a Turkic Muslim name and a number" or "At Antura, each boy was given a number and a Turkic Muslim name."

Lots of people would say these things don't matter but, if someone is going to go to the trouble of writing an article, it makes sense to edit it in such a way that the reader is not distracted more than absolutely necessary. Clarity is always the aim in any piece of writing; confusion is the foe. That's how I see it, anyway.

Instagram

I've discovered Instagram, and it is so much simpler to post photographs there that I think from now on I will use my account there to do what I've been doing here. If you want more Absentproof, therefore, try zedmkc on Instagram.

It Makes You Want to Cry

But not in a good way - if ever there was an example of how important it is to get things right, the condolence notice that distracts you with bad grammar must be it:

Seen at Heide

Fair point:

I Wish They Would

Perhaps this isn't even a mistake; perhaps Cate Blanchett meant 'take risks'. My suspicion though is that she was referring to 'the canon'. After seeing some of the efforts of her husband, plus his mates Benedict Andrews, (The Maids, shudder), and Simon Stone, (The Cherry Orchard, gnash teeth, and Hamlet, how dare he, jumped up, little - but enough said), I wish the whole lot of them would throw themselves at a cannon - or take a running jump from the Sydney Harbour Bridge (not that you could take a running jump, I suppose):

No O

O, no:

Flat Earth Society

Should someone tell them about the whole globe thing:

I See Thee

Ah, thou lying polls, it appears thou toldest not the truth:

Tiny Words Count Too

But so often they go missing in action:

How Many Did You Say

What a difference an 's' makes:

How Many Exactly

Will there be more than one job:

Son of the German Chancellor?

I'd heard of Adam Bandt, but this guy's new on me:

The Accidental Confluence of Things

You'd need Serendipity to untangle that sentence:

Let Them Eat Dung

Is he saying there are a lot of Greeks in the NSW branch:

Revising the Reverend

I wonder if they know each other:

Be Less Specific

So that was London in 2008, but what about elsewhere - or could it be that the odd comma is missing:

Queensland Eh?

Personally, I think he might have hoped for better:

Always Aspiring

Sadly the team at the AFR don't seem to have the same attitude to standards when it comes to copy editing: