Sub-Standard
12Jun09
Newspapers (or should that be media organisations?) tend not to touch the comments appended to articles on their websites. But surely they still tidy up the spelling and grammar when they lift them for print? Today’s London Evening Standard has a selection of comments from readers on Cristiano Ronaldo’s £80 million transfer to Real Madrid. Among them is this:
For another £20m they could of brought Newcastle.
Post-modern joke? Or sloppy cut-and-paste?
One Response to “Sub-Standard”
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Dear Michael
And talking of the sub-standard…
From today’s Telegraph online:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100000571/us-healthcare-expenditure-the-biggest-waste-of-money-in-the-world/
I read this thinking I’d like to send it to a couple of American friends. I can’t – it’s far too badly written. This man is an assistant editor of the paper? He needs an assistant to edit himself.
1. This is the opening sentence. What freelancer would ever get away with it? You wouldn’t even read the rest if this arrived from someone outside the staff:
“I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert on the US healthcare debate. Far from it. But what I do know is…”
2. And here’s a para opening a bit further on:
“Here’s one example of it I’ve experience of.”
3. Adviced? Placement of “again” in this sentence:
“In any case, he was eventually adviced by US practictioners where he had been hospitalised – having by that stage already run up medical bills of in excess of £100,000 for less than a month’s care – that he would have to have the whole operation as a matter of urgency again…”
4. How not to conclude a piece:
“The fact of the matter is that the money applied to healthcare in the US could not only be more equitably spent, but frankly a lot better spent too.”