Friday, 25 July 2008
The revenge of the sub
This isn't the first time Coren has done this type of thing. His previous victim was fellow reviewer Feargus O'Sullivan. Before that, an unfortunate magazine sub-editor caught both barrels of Coren's direct email style for altering the typographers favourite phrase, the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
According to Giles, this latest email is "ancient". Could its leaking be connected with the recent emergence of a foul-mouthed Coren caricature on twitter? This assumed-to-be poseur kept me amused this week but has now sadly (if understandably) been booted from the service.
So is this an example of the sub's (or subs') revenge? The suspect list must include Owen, Amanda, Ben and Tony from the Times' editorial team who were the apparent targets of Coren's rage.
**Update: The Times subs have responded.
Labels: Giles Coren, guardian, rants, the Times, twitter
posted by Gez at 3:46 pm
1 Comments
Friday, 22 February 2008
Egregious Signage
Old GrammarBlog friend Ade wasn't taking any chances that we might miss this picture.
Opting for the belt and braces approach, he emailed and twittered to let us know what he witnessed outside his house.Good work, Ade.
Labels: apostrophe abuse, photos, twitter
posted by Gez at 5:15 pm
4 Comments
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
No need to shout!
Regular contributor and twitter friend Aliya has got in touch to voice her discontent at being confronted with a grammatical error when attempting to sign up to Zlio, a web 2.0 shop thingy-ma-bob. Yes, that's the technical description.
"Please confirm informations bellow."
I really like this. I can imagine people yelling their email addresses at the screen, eager to try this new-fangled, web-based, voice recognition technology. Also, the pluralisation of uncountable nouns such as 'information', 'luck' and 'money' always makes me smile, I don't know why.
Perhaps our Aliya was having a bad day as she did not take this so lightly.
I was in the middle of signing up for Zlio's online DIY shop service, when this unforgivable monstrosity presented itself. There's just no excuse for this degree of error. In fact, Zlio should apologise for the level of offence, frustration, and downright despair that they have caused me.
That's good ranting, lass. Keep 'em coming.
Labels: plurals, spelling, twitter, uncountable nouns, wrong word
posted by Gez at 8:07 am
2 Comments
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Can this paragraph be saved?
NPR writer Laura Conaway wants to know if the following paragraph, from the New York Times, can be rescued.
Yet deep down in his soul, the transplant will hold on to the notion that umbrellas are to be used only as protection against the rain, which is wet and, when it drenches the clothes and skin, makes one uncomfortable.
What do you think, gang? I'll give you all a day to offer your suggestions in the comments section, then I'll have a bash. Although to perfectly honest I don't really know where to start.
Thanks to our twitter friend, Evolution London (a.k.a. Aliya), for the link.
Labels: commas, grammar, newspapers, twitter
posted by Gez at 10:23 pm
5 Comments
Friday, 2 November 2007
Comma, comma, comma, comma chameleon
Awful use of a comma and an inappropriate exclamation point.
This was brought to my attention by one of our new Twitter friends, Vebelfetzer (a.k.a. Eliza). Why don't you join in the fun challenge of attempting to write grammatically correct prose-bites using only 140 characters? When I joined Twitter I vowed never to stoop to txt spk or 1337 5p34k.
Follow us at http://twitter.com/grammarblog
Apologies for the title of this post, comma puns aren't easy to make up.
Labels: comma, exclamation marks, photos, punctuation, twitter
posted by Gez at 10:05 am
111 Comments
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