I wasn’t expecting much in the way of brainpower from the new free alternative paper Dose, but I did
expect them to have a reasonable grasp of the English language. That
grasp is a bit slippery, if the photo below is any indication:
From Dose’s Toronto edition, Wednesday, May 11, 2005, page 9.
It reads “PRINCE HARRY MAY be third in line for the thrown…”
(Memo to Dose: Dude, I shouldn’t have to point this out, but the word you’re looking for is “throne“.)
This sort of mistake goes beyond the garden variety “its/it’s” or “there/their/they’re” homophone trouble; we’re in “brain damage from inhaling solvents” territory here.
(Memo to Dose, just in case: A homophone is not a gay communications device.)
14 replies on “Maybe They Should’ve Called It "Dense" (or: "English as She is Wrote")”
The writer might not be to blame for that; it’s more likely an error by the subeditor (or copy editor, as ye call them over that side of the pond).
You have a point, so I changed the “memo” asides to “Memo to Dose“.
What is Dose anyway?
I see their boxes everywhere. I even tried reading it on the streetcar. But I could never find anything interesting to read. It was worse then most college newspapers which tend to be a mess of content with no unity, form or style.
c-c-clearly a brain fart. I noticed that you let one slip recently in your article to the tucows shareholders….
Anything that makes it into print in a newspaper is supposed to be seen by at least four people (the writer, the editor, the copyeditor, the proofreader). If the procedure is followed, it should be very extremely unlikely that something like this makes it into print.
You mean “What would like to see from Tucows?”
That’s just his fingers not being able to keep up with the speed of his brain.
And ‘thrown’ is really much different? I think this post was a little ridiculously hostile, for an honest mistake. I’m sure that no-one at Dose thinks that throne is spelled like that, and it was just a mental lapse that for, whatever reason, wasn’t caught by an editor.
Joey, we all know you have a little bit of an ego, this blog wouldn’t be anywhere near as entertaining if you didn’t. But to suggest that you are much better than Dose because of this mistake, which I believe this post does, is just a little bit out of line…
But it still happens. Those four people are only human, after all, and each of them has to deal with the pressures of putting out a newspaper every single day. I don’t think, out of all the major papers in Toronto, there is one that I have not noticed a mistake like this or a typo in.
Considering Joey doesn’t have a team of full-time paid staffers and editors to proof his copy, I think he does pretty darn good.
As someone else pointed out, typos are common place in publishing, but this kind is a bit different.
From what I read of Dose, there is very little editing, in the sense that there’s no over-riding style. The editors let individual writers do what they want. That seems to be part of their mandate. That’s why the content is a mess.
I suspect the original writer wrote it that way, and the editors simply used Spell Check (if that) to proof the copy. It’s lazy, and it shows.
Check through the archives of this blog. The stories within smoke anything I’ve seen in Dose.
As for the ego claim, you really should look up “egotistic” in the dictionary. It really isn’t an apt use of the word.
I never suggested that I was better than Dose. I simply think that Dose should expect more from its copy editors.
It’s the new “alternative” daily from CanWest Media. Basically it’s a cross between a college paper and USA Today, as done by a media conglomerate… not exactly somthing I have high hopes for.
No, no, it wasn’t out of line… Dose is a professional level paper put out by CanWest. Joey’s remarks are far kinder towards them than those made by my friends, several of whom are in school for editting…
Wanna bet the original article was dictated using voice-recognition software? That’s exactly the kind of mistake Naturally Speaking would make. (Which is why you’re supposed to proof the hell out of its output after.)
As another word/editing geek, I too say it’s a mistake that shouldn’t be getting through a professional paper.
Did anybody else assume, at first glance, that the ‘th’ should have been replaced by a ‘c’? That was my first instinct, until I read Joey’s comments. Maybe it was the later refernce to ‘head’ of the class.
Paul
Light & Dark
After being in a fairly bad mood – reading “A homophone is not a gay communications device” gave me a well needed belly laugh.
Cheers
Although by all information, had Harry written it himself, that wouldn’t have been the only spelling error…