Bits, Bites and Bloopers

The Rudd team's nonsense speak just keeps on getting better and better (or worse and worse).
Our meek and mild Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said he is "not going to speculate about possible outcomes in the future."
How's that for inflation? A triple tautology. And no doubt there are people out there who believe he actually said something meaningful.  When are the pollies going to stop waffling and murdering the language?
 

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Professor Barry McGaw, head of the National Curriculum Board, was on the money when he said [The Age, November 24] most teachers do not know how to teach grammar. Even more to the point was his comment that these grammatical ignorami will have to be retrained in order to do their job properly.
The problem - and the evidence is all around us - is that today's grammar teachers were brought up in an era when it was deemed unnecessary to teach such boring topics as sentence structure, parsing, parts of speech and even the difference between noun, verb, adjective and adverb.
Seemingly, grammar is about to make a long overdue return to the curriculum in primary and secondary schools. It cannot come soon enough. Standards have slipped to the point where the meaning of the written word is often incomprehensible. Illiteracy thy name is YouTube.

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers Blog Page Barry McGaw Natiponal Curriculum Board YouTube grammar. teachers

Seems all the subeditors have left the building at The Age.
The Diary column ran with the word layed and a page 3 story coined the interesting possessive  mens'.
We were also alerted to another news story (all on Monday morn; what a way to start the week) that wrote of a bureaucrat taking receipt of a report instead of simply receiving it.
Who needs subeditors?

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers The Age Diary column layed

No guys, that's not the well-known would-be lord mayor of Melbourne you have labelled as Gary Singer in today's Age; it's his partner, the infamous ex-NGV curator Graham Smith.

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers Melbourne Lord Mayor Gary Singer Graham Smith The Age

It has taken yet another committee (Kruddy must be in seventh heaven) to decide that mention must no longer be made of drought. Apparently it is merely dry weather that we are experiencing.
Just try telling that to the farmers who this committee of great thinkers decided would be upset by continually referring to years without rain as drought. 
And we assume that when things change, as surely they must,  there will be neither rain nor floods but simply wet.
Such weasel words.

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers drought dry weather farmers Kruddy

We liked the job specification given by Text senior editor Mandy Brett at last night's seminar at the Victorian Writers' Centre.
The ideal editor, she said was "an anal retentive who really cares about where the apostrophe goes".
 

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers Mandy Brett Victorian Writers Centre editor

Things are getting heavy-handed down in Yarra City if we are to believe today's Page 3 story in The Age.
Apparently council officers issued 175 notices for illegal building work which lead to 35 prosecutions.

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers The Age sub-editors Yarra City

What is going on at The Age?

Last week we had the literary editor writing about an author of reknown.

This week we have a person honing in on a speciality shop.

These are basic errors. Have all the sub-editors been dismissed?

Technorati Tags: Bits, Bites and Bloopers The Age sub-editors