TV news crawls, books, newspaper articles, and, of course, the internet.

Seems we used to have a much better handle on this issue.

RMD

I have been complaining about this for years. Spelling, grammar, fact checking, have all been getting worse.

Schools need to go back to the basic curricula. Too many of today's students can't do simple arithmetic, struggle to write a coherent, structured, paragraph, are ignorant of history, know nothing of classical music. Ask them to name ten past presidents of our country, and they will fail that simple question.

</soapbox>

Seems we used to have a better education system, which was focused on educating, NOT indoctrinating! Critical thinking was promoted as part of the education process, now it's scorned, ridiculed and canceled, if not outright prohibited. Texting is so pervasive with it's own shorthand, that the younger generation now entering or already working in business seemingly can't even speak proper English, let alone write it! Everything's going to hell as a result, and it's pervasive everywhere...Basically everything with words, in both the public and private sector is affected.

My father was an English major with a minor in Mathematics. Long ago he told me that those were the two most important subjects to study.

He seems wiser with every passing year.

I have been really noticing this recently. Its everywhere, from mainstream large media to smaller websites. Missing words, bad grammar, typos.

I guess editors and proofreaders don't exist anymore.

Maybe they had to get rid of the proofreaders for the DEI stuff?

quote:

Originally posted by rduckwor:
Editors and proofreaders - ERRORS everywhere

TV news crawls, books, newspaper articles, and, of course, the internet.

It seems we used to have a much better handle on this issue.

RMD

There! Edited.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:

quote:

Originally posted by rduckwor:
Editors and proofreaders - ERRORS everywhere

TV news crawls, books, newspaper articles, and, of course, the internet.

It seems we used to have a much better handle on this issue.

RMD

There! Edited.

It's been a decade or more since I've seen a printed book or an e-book without typos, grammatical mistakes, etc.

One of the nice things about Kindle books is that it's easy to highlight the errors without defacing a book. For some reason, marking them seems to make them less annoying.

I wonder how much of this is the push to quickly get things out the door or released. Like many products these days and even many workplaces, the drive is to get things done, not necessarily do quality work.

quote:

Originally posted by bryan11:
I wonder how much of this is the push to quickly get things out the door or released. Like many products these days and even many workplaces, the drive is to get things done, not necessarily do quality work.

That’s what I think. There is only one local network that is pretty good for local breaking news, but yeah, little proofreading. I do laugh at the blatant ignorance when a wrong word is used and I know it wasn’t a typo. It was plain old ignorance of the English language.

Yep. It's been this way for years.

I recall, back in the 90s, we were refinancing our mortgage and there are lots of documents and forms to sign.

I had made the same comment to the mortgage broker about how poorly drafted and edited most documents were. To illustrate, I picked up each document and promptly found multiple typos and/or grammatical errors in every single form.

I had something similar happen at a closing, where we converting a construction loan to a traditional mortgage after our house was complete and we had finally gotten a CO. They handed us a form to sign (one of MANY, all of which I proofread) that had the wrong borrower info on it. As a solution, they proposed I sign a BLANK FORM, and was told they'd fill in the (correct?) details later! I refused, and we waited for them to generate the document w/ the info correctly filled out.

Amazing the 'work' produced by high-priced 'professionals'...

Few years back wife and I were selling the family vacation home and did not have to be at the closing which was out of state... A week before the closing we got a package of 6 documents we had to sign in front of a notary and send back.. we were at the bank signing these and I got to the last one and started laughing and shaking my head... it was a form /contract saying their, the realtors representable could sign any forms that were needed to complete the sale.... I still to this day don't understand why they just did not send us that one form to sign and get noterrized...

And why the hell has cursive been dropped?
Friends tell me young job applicants these days can only manage block letters.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
And why the hell has cursive been dropped?
Friends tell me young job applicants these days can only manage block letters.

Digital forms, block forms, computers, iPhone and iPads, my cursive sucks anyway, rather type things out than write by hand, tech didn't change that though, been that way since a kid and why I took typing class in school so I didn't have to hand write reports....

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
And why the hell has cursive been dropped?
Friends tell me young job applicants these days can only manage block letters.

Digital forms, block forms, computers, iPhone and iPads, my cursive sucks anyway, rather type things out than write by hand, tech didn't change that though, been that way since a kid and why I took typing class in school so I didn't have to hand write reports....

Guess my age is showing as I take pride in my cursive handwriting and enjoy using fountain pens, especially those whose nibs provide expressive variable line widths.

I think the invasiveness of editors, proofreaders, and the loss of cursive in addition to reliance on such tools as handheld calculators have all contributed to a dumbing down of society in general. Witness such lamentable events as young kids working fast food not being able to make correct change.

To me it is ironic that such technology, along with increasingly poor public education, is helping making us less competitive on the world stage.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:


One of the nice things about Kindle books is that it's easy to highlight the errors without defacing a book. For some reason, marking them seems to make them less annoying.

Please use only erasable Sharpies; those Industrial Super Permanent Ink versions make it really hard to remove the markings from the screen.

Now, how about all those internet memes we laugh at?
I have discovered a natural law: there is at least one typo or grammatical error in every meme on the internet. Maybe I should give them a little credit and say the AVERAGE is ≥ 1 error.

^^^Perhaps the 'typos' and/or slang used in those MEMEs is intentional...Sense of humor, have you?