Why can't you write/speak proper?

Seriously Channel Seven, you need your on-air people to lift their game. Why? Because they are getting LAZY with the English language. In tonight’s Sydney evening news, we had these two clangers:

“Regyully”

“Particyully”

It’s not difficult to pronounce these two words correctly, and it could assist enormously in raising the language skills of your viewership, rather than perpetuate poor English usage. For the record, here’s the pronunciations you should be promoting among your on-air staff:

Regularly = reg-yew-lahr-lee

Particularly = par-tik-yew-lahr-lee

Channel Seven is beginning to appear in this list far too often for my liking. I’ve barely resisted the urge to scream at some of the very basic spelling errors that crop up in their news supers. But tonight’s news including a reporter piece to camera that included one of my pet hate turns  of phrase when she explained that smell:

“… was that big of an indicator of health …” [or similar]

Argh! Bad reporter! Bad english. I hear this often enough among uneducated speakers, but I never thought I’d hear it from a seasoned journalist that I assume has a university degree. Here’s what it should be:

“… was that big an indicator of health …”

One word. One superfluous little word.

I keep offering my linguistic services to Seven, but so far they haven’t taken me up on it. The offer is still open.