Today's most annoying

N&O Grammar Errors Forum
Under the Dome:

" McKissick said he has owned homes in each of Durham's Senate districts since 1993."

Is that two districts, nine districts, or 22 districts? Seems germane to me, considering the expense of owning homes and the rarity of owning even two homes in the same city/county, much less more. I assume that there are two districts and he owns two homes. If the writer and editor wish to convey that succinctly, then the word is both, not each.

"Could GOP bring Dole down?

A top political observer said this week that U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole could falter in her bid for re-election in 2008, but that North Carolina Democrats still have a tough road ahead of them."

I'm pretty sure GOP still means Republicans, and there isn't the slightest hint in this item that they intend to commit fratricide upon the good Senator. I nearly spit out my tea, wondering how that could be a subordinate item in the column, then read and realized it was just a stupid error.

Star News photo caption problems

Star News Forums

I won't go into a lot of detail as the last time I assessed the apparent professionalism of the online staff, they disappeared me for weeks.

This CQ business has been going on for months - it comes from whoever enters the information about the photograph into their computer archive, and CQ indicates the spelling has been verified. That makes this even funnier, as the person who wrote this added "I HAVE CALLED SGT. WILLIAMS AND THIS IS THE PROPER SPELLING OF HIS NAME" even though that is what CQ is supposed to stand for.

It is normally removed before publication, don't know why they don't bother to do it for the online edition, but then again I think we've already established that I don't understand a lot of how and what they do to the online edition ....

The "satalite" typo is separate but related, just more failure of whoever makes the online edition to do the most basic part of the job.

By the way, you missed the other typo in the same sentence, Pman - "Nesbit" Courts.

p.s. I also agree with you that this was a poor choice of photos to accompany the tax increase story. And the caption doesn't tie it into the story at all - maybe I missed it, but I don't see anything in the story about satellite offices or anything about morale or whatever the last sentence in the caption is referring to.

Under the Dome makes the leap

News & Observer Editors Blog
04/22/07 at 09:54
I have already weighed in on the topic of anonymity and posting. However, speaking of faults, I am posting this here because among other things wrong with it, the comment function on the new Dome blog doesn't work.

Your web folks appear to have unveiled that blog a little prematurely. Or do you truly think the names listed in the Profiles section are appropriate? Or worse yet, does someone think they are amusing?

I suspect the following politicians highlighted there might disagree with all three of the above concepts. (It's not ready, it's not correct and it's certainly not funny.)

Speaker John Hackney
U.S. Representative George Butterfield
U.S. Representative John Coble
Candidate Johnny Edwards
U.S. Representative Robert Hayes
"H. Majority Leader" Lindsey Holliman
U.S. Representative Douglas McIntyre
U.S. Representative Ralph Miller
U.S. Representative Joseph Shuler

I suppose you might argue that it's correct to list them by their given names, and I am assuming that that's what they all are, without researching every single one. But you don't follow that practice in the newspaper and no one else does either - and there is also disparity in the titles, with Jim Black listed as "Former Speaker" but Mr. Edwards disparaged with only "Candidate" - since when is that appropriate standing alone, without including either "presidential" or "former senator?" I also don't believe using "H. Majority Leader" or "S. minority leader," or for that matter, "Former speaker" is appropriate either. There's lots of room in that box, and you need to include the body in which each profiled individual serves - assuming, that is, that it is for the use of the general public on the web and not an internal document for those who already know who these people are.

This looks to me like the unsupervised and unreviewed work of an intern – or should I say, that would be the only possible explanation, while still not excusing its appearing in a product trumpeted on the top of the home page of your website. Most of the profiles indicate that they were last modified days ago, and still no one appears to have noticed a little problem. This does not bode well for the future of that web section.

05/07/07 at 14:43
I don't know whether any of you get email alerts about posts to this blog, so I may be speaking into the abyss here. Even so, I figure here is the place to note that a) the problems with the Dome website noted above have been fixed (mostly - apparently the unsuitable abbreviations don't bother you as much as they do me) and b) as of today, it appears the problem that was engineered into the "Printer Friendly" function some months ago has been fixed. I've only tried four or five articles, but they all resulted in an actual usable, printer-friendly page.

Thanks for paying attention, sort of, sometimes!

Send In the Clowns. Don't Bother, Sanjaya's Here

Washington Post
I don't watch American Idol, have never seen any of the performances by anyone but the Sanjaya clips on the news, and couldn't care less about who wins it.

However, I did just watch Blake Lewis on Youtube, just because this description sounded so goofy. And I made a remarkable discovery - this description is so inaccurate and negative that I can safely say it's a lie. Stroking himself? He put his hand a few inches inside his jacket, in the neighborhood of the breast pocket, once, for about 4 seconds. Never touched any other part of his body, much less 'stroked' anything, at all. Spinning? He did a sort of little circle dance step maybe 3 or 4 times during the song, not the single slickest maneuver in history but nothing terribly weird or uncoordinated or anything else bad about it.

I have never liked Mack the Knife and think the lyrics are weird, but this is the first time I ever was actually able to understand the whole story of the song. And finally, he didn't confide to Ryan that he didnt 'get' the lyrics - he was asked which was more difficult this week, going first or the lyrics, and he said lyrics. And Ryan said, 'It was a little tough in rehearsal this week - ya got it.'

I think he has a very nice voice, that it was a cool jazz vibe, for that show at least, likewise pretty hip for that show, and not the worst version ever of that song. And I think this exaggerated and snarky summary of the performance borders on the uncalled-for. That's just my opinion, but at least it's based on what really happened.

It's the print version, too, not just the website!

Star News Forums
The ineptitude ends up on paper as well. Either that or the Currents staff is speaking Welsh, Martian or Basque, or some combination thereof.

I was just looking at Thursday's Currents, and found a page head that says [I EVO [MER] and another one that says [TRI] M[RO]. They are complemented by subheads on the pages which say SNTOR, GI RGN HGOG, HDNGI, and my favorite by far: SI GTUYI SAYI DHRNNS.

Something is very strange over there....