February 26th, 2010
hat a difference a day or two makes – on The Sun’s website at least. Just a couple of days ago, we were treated to this gem.
Yes, it’s a scantily-clad woman and – far more offensively – she’s put a dot over a capital ‘I’. But that’s as nothing compared to the writer (or possibly sub-editor) who thinks that ‘mangle’ is spelt ‘mangel’. Maybe the culprit’s from Lincolnshire – they do a good line in mangelwurzels up there.
Still, it made me laugh – and it made lots of people on Twitter laugh as well. As you can see, the link got passed around a fair bit.
Imagine my dismay, then, that the killjoys at Wapping decided to clean up the piece – not only correcting the duff spelling, but substituting the picture and caption at the head of the page. I mean, where’s the inspiration in this?
And before you get all steamed up, there is a sort of serious point to this. If you want people to be literate, you need to encourage them to play with language and have fun with it. So, why remove this caption?
Dot the i’s, cross the tease… a lesson to remember
Only to replace it with:
Back to basics… learning the foundations of any language is key
It might not be illiterate, but it’s deeply boring. And that’s a much worse crime than spelling ‘mangle’ wrong.
Don’t you think?
When journalists’ illiteracy leaves them looking (at) a right tit
10:35 am. Filed under: Blog, Journalism.
Author: Ben Locker.
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Tags: illiteracy, Journalism, literacy, spelling
2 Responses to “When journalists’ illiteracy leaves them looking (at) a right tit”
Brilliant!
I also agree. At least the old style was amusing, and to be honest I only really like things that amuse me.
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