See Grandma, my eyes are really dark blue....not big brown ones like daddy

See Grandma, my eyes are really dark blue....not big brown ones like daddy

Ryan and friend

Ryan and friend
Mommy, Daddy, I'm saying Hi to Grandma?

This one is for you, Grandma!

Nathan

Nathan
soccer with determination and no airplane distractions

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

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?


1 comment:

linda said...

its a sign of the times and peoples laziness.now days computers have spell check so there is no reason for errors in spelling.our school systems have become lazy and expect kids to use their electronic school tablets and computers to checks the spelling and there is no sentence and paragraph structures,children are not taught to think for themselves and can not eye the incorrections.i remember when my son was going to school,some schools taught kids to spell the words the way they sounded not the way they where supose to be spelled..we reap,now, what we have sewn.