More importantly
WTF is that thing in the bottom right corner of the picture?!
Body part or sex toy?
Phone-hack backlash BBC in embarrassing headline gaffes
We at Vulture Central know only too well that it has been an extremely busy week in the world of phone-hacking for reporters across the land, but that's surely no excuse for this worrisome piece of sloppy copy from none other than Auntie this morning. The BBC news magazine has thankfully now corrected its "Phone-hacking: The …
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Friday 22nd July 2011 12:41 GMT Gert Selkobi
A common mistake.
Although not one that is acceptable from such a high and mighty organisation as the BBC, this is a very common mistake. Last night I was reading through some technical articles on OpenBSD network security, written by an obviously intelligent person, which was littered with the exact same gotcha. If people only read their work back to themselves in a proof reading exercise, this would be easily caught.
Awaits grammar check report from fellow commentards.
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Friday 22nd July 2011 13:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Guten Tag
Guten Tag Herr Commentard - I'm happy to oblige
Your statement "which was" should be "which were" as you wouldn't say "the articles was".
Also "proof reading" should be "proofreading".
I'm also a little unhappy about the penultimate sentence.
I now await "You call yourself a grammar nazi?!" replies...
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Friday 22nd July 2011 13:49 GMT Captain Scarlet
Well
Everything I write and publish is a work of art and 100% correct until someone points in the first sentence its complete gibberish and their eyes have started bleeding from its hidiousness.
You need someone else who has not seen the work before to read through it and see what mistakes they find.
Paris because I probably just wrote a load of gibberish.
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Friday 22nd July 2011 12:58 GMT The Electron
Pot - kettle!
It is not just the BBC (or El Reg) who seem to have trouble with spelling and grammar. Plenty of online and print media make silly mistakes, such using metre instead of meter (and vice-versa) and getting the SI units wrong (MHz, not mhz)!
The problem stems from the "education" system. Whilst I was studying BTEC National Certificate and Higher National Certificate in Electronic Engineering, I was pleased to see how each year, we re-visited and revised the previous year's work, then added to its complexity. Schools should adopt this approach when teaching maths and English. You could ask me to 'conjugate a verb', but I cannot remember how!
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Monday 25th July 2011 11:12 GMT BorkedAgain
Very good Peter.
Also, there's a difference (a factor of eight) between Mb and MB.
b - bit
B - byte (8 bits)
Obviously this shouldn't be a shock to anyone on here, but the number of times some numpty gets those confused when trying to sell me internet access drives me potty.
(Mental image of toilet with steering wheel. Must lie down...)
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Friday 22nd July 2011 14:44 GMT Christopher W
Shurely shome mishtake
i frequently find myself reaching for the "Contact the Editors" page to inform them of misspelt words or poor grammatical constructions. It's really very disappointing.
I had English Comprehension, English Language *AND* grammar lessons at school. I grew to love my engagement with my mother tongue and I feel pretty confident that I can both speak and write to a high, consistent level with minimal errors. I certainly take pride in the fact that I can use their, there and they're appropriately (and the same for its / it's / its' - SERIOUSLY, IT'S NOT THAT HARD). The plague of hyphens slowly infesting written British English is a particular bugbear too... Hyphen-this, intersected-that! Unnecessary and illogical in some cases.
The old gem I always wheel out in these situations is a crudely handwritten sign outside the village where I grew up: "TRACTOR,S TURNING"
Mine's the one with the Oxford Super Compact Pico Pocket English Dictionary in it
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Friday 22nd July 2011 22:22 GMT Fred Flintstone
However..
.. you too shall eventually succumb to the "teh" problem as your word processor (be it MS Office, OpenOffice or now even the Apple autocorrect in Lion and anything iOS) is busy ramming that into your muscle memory with unrelenting force. You can thank Microsoft for that.
Eats, shoots, and leaves.
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