It's A Shame

Our local newspaper needs to hang it's head in shame. Or, why bother...It's just a sign of the times that things are and have been going downhill fast...Many times recently, I have shook my head when there were obvious spelling errors. They of course, invite us to report all in what they call "Accuracy watch" which appears on page 2.

There many ways a mistake can be made. It was not allowable to have a widow, for example, in years past. That meant not allowing a single word to be placed on a line by itself. Newspaper business is all about selling space. If you had a word that would hang alone, it was advisable to find a replacement word that would fit on the fullest previous line. Sometimes, that meant kerning, a term that suggested change of the size, utilizing a different typeface that was condensed. Another way, was to size down a word or line of type. There would be an adjustment, as there was no "widow" allowed.

This day and age computerized technology, which was developed to help ensure accuracy by methods like "find and replace" and abc checks, have been thought to result in  a better product. Why then are we finding so many errors? Could it be simply, apathy?

Years ago, we relied on "proofreaders" to do the job. Computers cannot replace human intelligence, obviously. So who is looking at the finished product?

What beats all was the evening edition tonight, which on the very top of the front page after the header centered under the headline was a line that read:
 'It's going to be up to this body a
nd Future Bodies To Try To Move Forward'

That was intended to be "and" I suppose, just pick a line.

If you find your product to be acceptable to the public-- who are good paying and intelligent people, your sadly mistaken. The embarrassment is solely on you. No wonder people refer to you as "The Rag." Isn't it ime to clean up your act?