stuff.co.nz and Simon Cowell

I get my news mainly from stuff.co.nz

It's easy to get there and has the usual amount of daily news,

which is not very much but

enough to keep one informed enough

to have conversations with other stuff readers.

 

I also enough reading The Herald newspaper,

but I like their hard copy rather than their website

firstly, because their paper is delivered to my workplace everyday,

secondly, because there's something nice about reading a newspaper

(but not enough for me to buy my own regularly once I moved to house with no fireplace).

 

What surprises me is the reasonably consistent poor

 quality of language ability and grammar on stuff.co.nz

 

It's poor.

Today's example was over kill with the term (sic).

When you see (sic) in an article it means:

 

sic¹

sɪk/

adverb

adverb: sic

1. 1.

   used in brackets after a copied or quoted word that appears odd or erroneous to show that the word is quoted exactly as it stands in the original, as in a story must hold a child's interest and ‘enrich his (sic) life’

To sum it up,

(sic) means the reporter or writer of the article is

distancing him or herself from the poor language skills of the

subject and/or person quoted in the article.

Nice.

 

So in today's entertainment section*

there is an article about Simon Cowell's new baby boy.

In the article, tweets from Mr Cowell's are quoted.

They are about little Eric with things like this,

"Named after my dad (sic)"

or

""I never knew how much love and pride I would feel,(sic)" he captioned the shot."

In case you missed it,

the (sic) is because Simon failed to put a full stop at the end of his sentence and

a comma at the end of the second example.

I feel this is quite judgemental of Mr Cowell as

I suspect the first (sic) may also refer to his use of a small 'd' on 'dad'.

Some people choose to use a capital 'D' on 'Dad'

but... oh let's go with who cares if you use a big 'D' or a little 'd'.

 

According to how I understand the grammar usage of generic names it should be

a capital 'D' as Simon is referring to a specific Dad,

namely his own.

If he were referring to a groups of dads,

as in a non-specific muddle of dads,

then a lower case 'd' would be appropriate.

 

 

Now  on Twitter there is a certain degree of leeway,

that's the point.

There's leeway on blogs because it's personal,

so quirky twists to language and errors are part and parcel of the nature of blogs.

But as a formal publication, that it will be assumed provides well researched,

c

orrect and current information that is

presented in a interesting and informative manner

with quality spelling and grammar,

thoughtlessness, overzealousness

What I learned a longtime ago,

in the communications business is that as long as you are consistent

in your poor or correct grammar,

then that is fine.

This is to accommodate the changes in how we use language over the generations.

 

But for stuff.co.nz to be sticklers about missing full stops and false commas

when quoting the bastion of poor and creative spelling and grammar, Twitter

but ignoring the very regular errors of spelling in other articles.

What I have realised is that the grammar Nazis are in the articles

directly gathered from overseas.

And the badly spelled articles are by domestic reporters. 

 

Unfortunate.

 

* The range of current events news is pretty limited, so I am forced to read the entertainment page.  It's not so bad I have to read the sports page.