LA Times misspells ‘carried’

In an article about a suicide bombing attempt, the LA Times misspelled the word ‘carrier’.

Guardian Grammar Quiz

I’m not sure how long running this is, but I just noticed that one of the blogs on The Guardian has a grammar quiz. I did very well, but these were softball questions. I did not know the “and” trick to separate adjectives, despite knowing the rule intuitively. I understand the apprehension that the author has about getting into the apostrophes and quotations rules, since they differ between Britain and America for English (Note: I thought I had written about this but cannot find it). Wikipedia has started to adopt the British rules, for some strange reason, and it’s becoming widespread. I wonder if it Wikipedia is ubiquitous enough to influence this adoption. There are some but not all rules that I agree with in the British system — I would argue for a hybrid system combining the most logical elements of both. The reason for my disagreement with certain British elements is because of the largely ambiguous nature of the cases in which quotation marks are placed inside and outside the closing punctuation marks.

Blog note: it has been awhile since I’ve updated this regularly, despite having found several errors. I hope that changes with more time.

Unknown syndicated source misplaces comma

An unknown syndicated source, reproduced on BBC and several other news outlets, ran a story about Tiger Woods and one of his sponsors. In this article, they quote a source, “He’s in a very, nasty awkward position ….” It is not a “nasty awkward position” but rather a “nasty, awkward position.” The phrase “very nasty” should be one modifier and not separated.

USA Today blog misspells “wear”

A USA Today sports blog reported on LeBron James’ decree to give up his number in honor of the retired great Michael Jordan. For a number of reasons, it’s kind of silly. USA Today meant to say “wear” and said “were.” Darn that spell checker and its unwillingness to ask the grammar checker before okaying things. Additionally, it appears that USA Today do not put an additional comma before the “and” at the end of lists, which is common in local style, though I do not prefer it since it makes the last two items in a list appear to be one, inseparable item. Finally, the mixing of modifiers for each item in the list is jarring to me, and I do not prefer it.

Globe misspells ‘loss’

The Boston Globe misspelled the word “loss,” in a caption about the Boston Celtics loss to the Phoenix Suns (link likely not pointing to original material). In one sense, we are relieved that the Celtics “loss” to the Suns, since it takes all the consecutive game streak pressure off of us while we concentrate on playing basketball that’s balanced between halves of the season. My apologies to my reader; the Celtics and the Red Sox make me a bit emotional.

BBC switches words

The BBC were reporting on the NASA/ESA Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI), in which the BBC made two errors. They switched the words “Exploration” and “Joint,” and they did not capitalize the acronym properly.

Boston Globe’s MetroDesk makes two errors

The Boston Globe is a major newspaper that runs several blogs, including one called MetroDesk, which reported on a stabbing in Brighton, MA. I am not convinced this is flat-out incorrect, but I think it should read, “… found the victim at about 2:16 am ….” If the modifier “about” was not in this sentence, then it would be incorrect. Additionally, I think that “avenues” should be capitalised, since it is the complete name of both streets, Brighton Ave and Harvard Ave.

Naturally there is some hesitation on my part whenever I am posting about grammar in stories where something tragic has occurred. It is not at all my intention to diminish the value of the stories, but I feel that these stories deserve proper copy editing to convey their important content more accurately.

Additionally, I would like to note that I’m now considering major blogs to be fair game, since their readership is vast, and they should be held to higher standards of journalism. However, I cannot and will not publish every mistake Engadget makes, since I’d have to hire an assistant.

BBC does not capitalise some acronyms

The BBC recently reported on the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI). In their article, they capitalised the acronym “Meji,” which appears to be incorrect according to the European Space Agency’s own usage, as well as the joint press release with NASA.

This appears to be a terrible local style decision by the “Bbc” that I may not have ever noticed before. They also refer to NASA as “Nasa” and ESA as “Esa.” I once agreed with Engadget on a limited usage of de-capitalisation of acronyms, but there’s something about this that is egregious.

Where I find that commonly used acronyms such as “NASA” and “ESA” are completely appropriate in all capitals, I think that “MATLAB” and “NVIDIA” as product and company names, respectively, should be referred to as “Matlab” and “Nvidia.” The difference here is that the latter two are not standard acronyms; though MATLAB technically stands for “MATrix LABoratory,” no one (not even their own trademark?) refers to it as such.

Another note: I cannot recall if I use British spellings of words that end in “ize” or “ise” in this blog. I vastly prefer the British spellings but sometimes bend on this for American audiences.

Globe uses capitals after colon

A note – this is probably the least exciting headline ever created, though I’ve seen some pretty awful scientific poster titles.

The Boston Globe apparently capitalizes the first word after a colon in a sentence. I prefer the lower case starting word, since it is a continuation of the sentence. It appears to be local style at the Globe.

Another note: I am not sure what WordPress is doing to this image. My apologies to my reader.

Globe cites wrong symphonies

The Boston Globe ran a photo today with a caption about the Beethoven symphonies performed last night. The Globe said that Symphonies No. 4 and 5 were performed, when it was No. 3 and No. 4.