True stuff: Just when you thought "media English" couldn't get worse

Seen on Canada's Global News website.

Apostrophe errors are commonplace nowadays, but this is the first time I've seen this one. Guess they don't teach spelling in J-school any more... if they ever did.

Walt's Crappy Journalism Award - Canadian division

I have an intense dislike for the Toronto Star (aka "Toronto Red Star"), the newspaper that's so politically correct that it makes the New York Times and WaPo look like Republican rags. It used to boast of the largest circulation of any Canadian newspaper. Then it tried a paywall, which it quickly abandoned because, errr, nobody's willing to pay for a steady drip-drip-drip of "progressive" editorials disguised as reportage, written by the kind of people to whom Canada's Prime Minister is forever apologizing.

However... I've entered the Star in the latest round of my Crappy Journalism sweepstakes not for its incessant propaganda for liberalism, but for the dismal quality of its editing and proofreading. And I'm making the assumption that they do still have people, or maybe one person, somewhere in the basement of 1 Yonge Street, who actually looks over articles before they're posted or printed. I could be wrong about that, as witness this remarkable "Correction" from today's fishwrap.

More functional illiteracy, this time from Revelstoke BC

Ed. says we shouldn't always pick on the lamestream media. Illiteracy (and innumeracy) is everywhere. Even those responsible for public signage seem to have been infected, at least in Revelstoke, British Columbia.

Memo to the sign painter: Back to scohol for you, buddy!

"Special councel" Trump's mistake, not National Post's

Ed. here to man up (on behalf of Walt and myself) and acknowledge our mistake. An earlier post today attributed the error in the headline "Incandescent Trump rages against Obama, Clinton and appointment of 'special councel'" to the lack of education of journalists at the National Post.

Turns out it's POTUS who can't spell. Apologies to the National Post and I renew my offer to President Trump to edit his Tweets, in return for a modest stipend and other considerations.

More lamestream media illiteracy: National Post

Today's shocking example of journalistic illiteracy comes from Canada's National Post. Here's part of the landing (index) page from this morning's online edition.

Walt hopes that the bombs in question were defused, not "diffused". In today's Europe, bombs are diffused by Muslim jihadis, not (we hope) "experts". But such is the vocabulary of your typical lamestream media "reporter" nowadays. Journalist wannabes should read more. Or sign up for Walt's course in Remedial English, coming soon to a university not near you.

Footnote: The article to the left of the bomb story tells you all ye need to know about the state of the No-Longer-Great White North.

More media illiteracy - Toronto Sun

Ed. here with a little gem from the landing page of today's Toronto Sun. "Rouged up"? Who could make up something like that? (Geddit?)

Also seen (but not captured) on the Globe and Mail landing page today, a video caption including the phrase "baited breath"... like the cat that ate some cheese and sat in front of the mousehole with baited breath. (Geddit?) That one is very common.

Zimbabwe bans canning of children

Ed. here. This has been a pretty intense week, with all the furor and debate about freedom of speech and Islamic extremism. Walt is taking the weekend off to smell the roses, but, rather than end the week on a sour note, I'd like to offer you this little item, which appeared today on the landing page of Zimbabwe NewsDay.

Those not familiar with Zimbabwe's education system should understand that it's based on the British public school model, inherited from the bad old colonial days (now looking pretty good in retrospect), which included caning, shown in the cartoon. "Canning" suggests technological innovation in cannibalism, which presumably is still illegal in Zimbabwe. Geddit now?

The error, which tells you all you need to know about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, is repeated in the story. Click here to read the whole thing.

Teenaged African rapist to be "canned"

Walt's agent in Zimbabwe -- who refuses to take a number and thus must be referred to only as SeeZee -- sends the following report from the online edition of NewsDay, which we republish verbatim.

A HARARE teenager yesterday was lucky to escape a prison sentence for raping a six-year-old girl after the court ordered that he be canned for the crime.

Regional magistrate Fadzai Mtombeni convicted the teenager for contravening the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. The 13–year–old boy from Waterfalls had denied the allegations of rape, but was convicted due to overwhelming evidence.

“The accused to receive a moderate corporal punishment of six strokes with a rattan cane to be administered in private at Harare Remand Prison by a designated prison officer,” ruled Mtombeni.

Allegations against the boy were that he had sexual intercourse with a neighbour’s daughter without her consent. It was the State’s case that on March 8 this year, the complainant was playing with two friends. It is alleged that one of the friend’s sisters then called the two and they went away leaving the complainant alone.

The accused then called the complainant who responded and they went into a nearby maize field where he laid her down under a tree surrounded by maize stalks. He then removed the girl’s panties and had intercourse with her.

When the complainant went back home, she asked her father for some water to bathe and the father referred her to the mother. When the mother was just about to bathe her, she discovered that she was bleeding. When she asked her what had transpired, the complainant refused to speak. She then took her to the police where the girl finally opened up and disclosed what had happened, leading to the arrest of the accused person.

Such is the state of "journalism" in a country which once had one of the highest literacy rates in the Dark Continent. Of course that was in the bad old days of colonialism.

Lets kill the apostrophe ???

We don't get a whole lot of comments on our posts. Some readers may think there's no point in arguing with someone who has his own printing press (figuratively speaking). But others, we think, don't write for fear that Ed. will catch a grammatical error and make fun of the commenter's inability to follow the rules of English grammar and composition.

This fear is not unfounded. Walt is the son of an English teacher. [Do you mean a teacher who was born in England or a teacher of the English language? Ed.] [Stop picking the nit. You know what I mean! Walt]

Aha! There's the problem, right there. It is possible to break the rules and still make oneself understood. "I seen it," grates on my son-of-an-English-teacher's ears, but I know what the speaker is trying to say.

Much of the time we cannot hear grammatical errors in oral speech. The speaker may not know whether he's saying "their", "there" or "they're", but the listener can work out the difference from the context. Consider these sentences. (1) Their coming was foretold by the prophet. (2) "They're coming," the prophet said, "just as I predicted." You don't even need to think about the spelling unless you have to transcribe what you heard.

Which brings us to the apostrophe. A mistake that makes me wild [and dangerous! Ed.] is the confusion of "it's" and "its", which we see nowadays even in "respectable" journalism. No-one knows which is correct because they have been taught (by teachers who themselves don't know the rules) that self-expression is more important than correct spelling and grammar.

If you were born after 1955, Walt will now teach you the rule. "It's" is a contraction for "it is". "Its" is the possessive of the third person singular neuter pronoun "it". Thus "It's raining outside so the dog went into its kennel" is correct... assuming the dog had been neutered. [Cute. Ed.]

But what difference does it make?! Someone could write "Its raining outside so the dog went into it's kennel" and the reader would understand perfectly well. You can't hear the apostrophe! It might as well not be there, as in "Its raining outside so the dog went into its kennel." Who cares??!!

That point has been made by many cunning linguists, including Richard Nordquist, founder of The Campaign to Abolish the Apostrophe. The comments on his six-year-old blog are worth reading, and largely support his case.

Mr. Nordquist's blog has inspired a newer website, Kill the Apostrophe, "for those who want to remove the apostrophe from the English language, on the basis that it serves only to annoy those who know how it is supposed to be used and to confuse those who dont."

Even purists like Walt and Ed. are just about convinced. The only problem is that if we get rid of the apostrophe, it won't be long before we're dropping the capital "I" (first person singular pronoun) in favour of "i", and writing abominations like "ur" instead of "you're"... Oh... Wait...

An education sponsorship campaign everyone can support

Congratulations to the Red Lion Area (PA) School District for working hard to promote support for the public school system. Obviously our schools need all the help they can get. If you're planning to give, Walt would suggest earmarking your donation for a remedial course in spelling for sign painters.

For recent j-school graduates, Walt explains English "confusables"

Walt was dismayed -- no, shocked! -- last week last week to see a story in the local Daily Fishwrap headlined "EMS team repels down gorge". Apart from a stern letter to the editor urging him to hire an English-speaking sub-editor, I haven't written anything since.

Do they teach English in journalism schools nowadays, I asked. Do they do any vocabulary-building exercises? Does spelling count? Are any of these things important any more? Or do "journalists" these days rely on their spell-checkers and e-thesauri?

Walt urges journalist wannabes and other aspiring writers to remember that the computer is merely a dumb beast of burden. It does what you tell it, no more and no less. If the spell-checker, let's say, gives you a choice, you still have to know the rules of spelling and grammar to make the correct choice.

So also with vocabulary. You have to know the meanings of words in order to spell them correctly. Is it "know" and "no"? "To" or "too"? Thanks to "text-talk" the trend is now to treat those distinctions as unimportant. If you write "I didn't no that", people will still geddit...right? They won't think you mean "I didn't deny that." Right?

Then there's the matter of contractions. We're talking grammatical contractions here, not the physical kind as in childbirth. But it seems recent graduates of j-school know more about the latter than the former, as we see from the frequent misuse of "there" for "they're" or, even more frequently, "your" for "you're".

As part of our little effort to raise the standards of written English -- or at least prevent them from slipping any further -- Walt will tell you the meanings and proper spellings of these "confusables".

"Your" = possessive, "belonging to you"
"You're" = contraction of "you are"
"Yore" = a long, long time ago, "days of yore"

"Their" = possessive, "belonging to them"
"They're" = contraction of "they are"
"There" = not here, "over there"

People who call themselves writers should know the difference. If you make a mistake writing a comment on one of Walt's posts, Ed. will print it just the way you wrote it, revealing your linguistic ineptitude for all to see.

Cough up that mucus!

In "Hocus Pocus Mucus Pucus", Walt accused marketers for Benylin and Buckley's of not knowing the difference between "mucous" (adjective) and "mucus" (noun). Just part of Walt's ongoing rant about proper English usage.
Well, it turns out that the folks at Benylin -- or their advertising agency, perhaps -- either do know the difference or are trying to have it both ways. Only yesterday, Walt saw a Benylin commercial, for "Mucus and Phlegm Relief". If I were going to buy an expectorant -- that's what it is -- I'd buy Benylin if only to support correct spelling.

The Benylin ad, by the way, is not as emetic as the Buckley's ad. Here we see only a woman coughing up a loogie into ... errr ... the inside of her elbow. Apparently that's the way you're supposed to do it now. Enjoy your lunch.

Hocus pocus, mucus pucus!

Walt will now present the award for most disgusting TV commercial of the winter season. The envelope please...

The winner is Buckley's, proud makers of the cough syrup that tastes so awful you know it works! That's an old marketing ploy -- Listerine still uses it too -- but the trick is to illustrate how well the medicine works. Mouthwash manufacturers have tried simulations of microscopic close-ups of the germs dying in your mouth. Not good, especially around dinner-time.

Buckley's has a new product, "Buckley's Mucous [sic] & Phlegm Relief". The same thing, with the same spelling, can be found in the USA as "Benylin Mucous & Phlegm Relief".

Having spent the New Year's holiday in Canada, I had the opportunity [misfortune? Ed.] to see a commercial for the new product, a commercial which managed to offend even Walt's not-so-delicate sensibilities. This one, like the Moores commercial, has yet to appear on YouTube, but I expect it, or a parody, any time now.

The creators thought a good illustration of the product at work would be to show someone suffering from congestion of the lungs standing behind a fluoroscope, so we can see what happens when the stuff loosens up the goo within and the patient horks up a really good one.

All this is done in cartoon form so it's not quite so gross as it sounds, but here's the thing. The sound is this deep, throaty cough and you can see the lunger coming up the windpipe. But then... nothing except the smile of relief on the character's cartoon face. What happened to the big gob of mucus and phlegm?! It doesn't bear thinking about.

Note to advertising agency: The proper spelling of that whitish slime is "mucus". That's how the noun is spelt. You can look it up: http://www.dictionary.com/. "Mucous" is the adjectival form. Dictionary.com says "mucous" and "mucus" can be confused. Even by people in the media who should know better, let alone marketers who really aren't expected to know very much.