I eagerly scour WHSmith every month for Writers' Forum, which is a challenge as they move the writing magazines pretty much every week. I've found them near the grocery/smallholding mags, the craft/sewing mags, the teaching schoolchildren mags, and this month, they were by the art section, which makes a bit more sense to me.I got the magazine home, and was dismayed. I turned to page 5 where John Jenkins, the editor, has his page. I found two sentences on the page which had missing full stops, which really annoys me, and there were two areas of huge white space, gaps in the middle of sentences. 'Okay,' I think, 'everyone makes mistakes.' Then, on page 15, I found 'was n't' and a bracket with a full stop inside and outside, thus.). page 17 those huge gaps between words again, page 19 another missing full stop, page 21 another huge gap in the middle of a sentence, page 22 speech starting without a capital letter, page 27 those pesky gaps again, page 51 more missing full stops, and those are just errors that I noticed, and I'm not the most efficient proof-reader in the world. Yet this magazine has an editor, an assistant to the editor, a consultant editor, and two editorial assistants. Surely, between them, they could have proof-read the copy so that there weren't so many basic errors? This is a magazine that is 'dedicated to providing encouragement and inspiration to those who want to write and see their work published.' Maybe they should use the grammar check function on their computer?
I got over it, just about, and was happily watching The Apprentice earlier on BBC1, when an advert flashed up for the following programme on BBC2 - 'The Apprentice [b]Your[/b] Fired'. After much gnashing of teeth and screaming at the TV I turned over to watch the opening credits of this programme, just to check the spelling of the title. Thankfullly, It was 'The Apprentice You're Fired' so it was only spelt incorrectly on the trailer.
Writers' Forum and the BBC, shame on you!
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4 comments:
Ooo...that's just the sort of the thing that makes me go all twitchy! Pure laziness!
Greetings Clare-
I must admit I do get quite irked when I observe incorrect grammar. Especially when the source is from people who are supposed to be experts on our language.
The obsession to overuse the conjuction 'and' is definitely near the top of my 'pet peeves.'
An example of this would be the use of 'and' in a run-on sentence. I cannot understand why there is such an urge to constantly write overly long sentences and the compulsion to go on and on and on until there is no logical reason to continue writing the sentence when it is obvious that the meaning within the sentence has been well and truly exhausted and it should seem blatantly obvious that the sentence and the content within that sentence has drawn to a conclusion. And finally...no 'ifs','ands' or 'buts.'
Kind regards adanac67 and klahanie and Gary....
I am rather lax with my grammer and have to admit to not knowing an adjective from a verb (I blame my schooling!). My partner however, adores beautiful typography and has shown me what to look for. He refuses to use Word and uses a programme called TeX. It's like a computer programming language but produces beautifully presented text, without big gaps (rivers through the page). So, you're not alone by any means.
I also get thoroughly annoyed by bad typography - my pet hate is "fully justified" text. In my view nothing could be less justified than the rivers of white that make smooth reading next to impossible - txxx
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