Bad Spelling By News Organizations

[Kuurgen]

Technically it's not bad spelling, just the word used is completely incorrect.


So I'm reading this article on Canoe and see this:

"What happened from there, we don't know," he said. "It was no secret that there was a foul odourless. We don't want to point fingers, but clearly something could have been done differently."

Reed said he can't imagine how police officers and sheriff's deputies could have missed the smell. His office records show that he called the health department in 2007 after a resident told him about an odourless that "smelled like a dead body," he said.


http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2009/11/03/11624986-ap.html

How do people get their jobs....sheesh.

Not sure if it's the AP's fault or Canoe, tried to find the original AP article, but wasn't able to. (okay i didn't search all that hard)

[pintobean]

Ha ha. That error is nothing compared to some of the stuff I've seen...

I was reading an article on the Globe and Mail's website a few months ago, about an OPP officer who was arrested and charged for giving fake IDs to a friend of his who was a con man on the run from the police... The published article said that the OPP officer gave his friend an ID bearing another man's name, and then in brackets there were comments from the author to the editor which stated the other man's name and said "we shouldn't publish this name because it is real person".

It made me laugh that they made such a huge error - they not only published private comments from the author to the editor, but the comments contained an innocent man's name that they didn't want published in the first place. I think I have a screenshot of the error saved somewhere...I'll see if I can find it.

[hagbard]

See it all the time. And stories that end mid



















sentence.

[Emancipated]

Ha ha. That error is nothing compared to some of the stuff I've seen...

I was reading an article on the Globe and Mail's website a few months ago, about an OPP officer who was arrested and charged for giving fake IDs to a friend of his who was a con man on the run from the police... The published article said that the OPP officer gave his friend an ID bearing another man's name, and then in brackets there were comments from the author to the editor which stated the other man's name and said "we shouldn't publish this name because it is real person".

It made me laugh that they made such a huge error - they not only published private comments from the author to the editor, but the comments contained an innocent man's name that they didn't want published in the first place. I think I have a screenshot of the error saved somewhere...I'll see if I can find it.

Wow.

[ronin893]

bad spelling? Try bad reporting. I can give you examples but forum policy forbids political subjects.

[Kaitlyn]

Came across http://probablybadnews.com/ recently.. some are better than others, but it's fun to skim through sometimes! :)

[45ED]

Technically it's not bad spelling, just the word used is completely incorrect.


So I'm reading this article on Canoe and see this:

"What happened from there, we don't know," he said. "It was no secret that there was a foul odourless. We don't want to point fingers, but clearly something could have been done differently."

Reed said he can't imagine how police officers and sheriff's deputies could have missed the smell. His office records show that he called the health department in 2007 after a resident told him about an odourless that "smelled like a dead body," he said.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2009/11/03/11624986-ap.html

How do people get their jobs....sheesh.

Not sure if it's the AP's fault or Canoe, tried to find the original AP article, but wasn't able to. (okay i didn't search all that hard)

I wonder if they meant to type "odorous (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/odorous)" (adjective), which roughly means "a strong distinct smell". Although it wouldn't make sense because you wouldn't use a qualifier like "foul" with "odorous" because it is a neutral sort of adjective. So you could say "odorous roses" or "odorous piles of sh*t" but not "pleasant odorous roses" and "hideous odorous piles of sh*t".

[Becks]

It's a typographic error.

[hagbard]

bad spelling? Try bad reporting. I can give you examples but forum policy forbids political subjects.

Reporting should be just that. He said, she said sort of things and an overview of the subject. A reporter should keep his personal beliefs to himself and just report the story. I'm pretty opinionated but you'd never guess my opinions based on my reporting. Not much of that in today's reporting.

Editorials are something entirely different, however.