Why can't you write/speak proper?

It will come as no surprise to any well-read net surfer that the world-wide-web is chock full of incredibly badly written pages. Now while there is nothing wrong with opening up the opportunity to publish to pretty much anyone, anyone who is writing for a public audience should make the effort to ensure their work is readable, intelligible and understandable.

Conspiracy sites are some of the worst (and they wonder why we don’t believe!), but even more unbearable are the personal blogs of people who think full length articles can be written like text messages. Sometimes you come across a site that was clearly written by someone for whom english is a second language, or who obviously just utilised google translate on a bad day. Other times the site is clearly by a native english speaker who just can’t seem to string a complete, intelligible sentence together.

Just a little extra effort, and these terrible “click out of there quickly” websites could have been so much better.

Here are just a few classic examples of websites that would otherwise be reasonably good value if it wasn’t for the atrocious writing:

www.supertravelpackages.com/top-3-mistakes-in-paris/

www.themakeupgallery.info/fantasy/mutants/xmystiquem.htm

tehgeektive.com/2012/02/25/how-cool-is-it-to-break-the-sound-barrier-that-cool/

topinfopost.com/2014/01/16/latest-invention-triton-oxygen-respirator-extracts-air-underwater/

pixelbell.com/90-absolutely-free-responsive-html5-css3-website-templates/

designinspirationmagazine.com/web/html5-audio-player/1529/

 technet.weblineindia.com/web/change-the-pitch-of-audio-using-java-sound-api/

An interesting video, but the sub-titles and other text on the video are woeful:

www.frequency.com/video/must-watch-hit-run-driver-in-southall/10821188/

I enjoyed watching the cricket over the summer, especially because the Australians regained the ashes in a glorious clean sweep. But that enjoyment was severely curtailed by the network’s terminal indecision about how to express simple english sentences. Occasionally (but only very occasionally, unfortunately) they got it right: “Australia leads by 300 runs”. But more often than not they screwed it up: “Australia need 3 wickets”, or “Australia are batting”.

Let’s make it perfectly clear, Nine: The Australian cricket team is a team. Singular. Referring to “Australia” as a plural is wrong. All references should be in the singular. Here are the correct phrases:

“Australia leads by …”

“Australia is …”

“Australia needs …”

If you want to refer to the members of the team, then use a personal collective, like “What the English batsmen need is …” (not “What England need …”).

The unfortunate thing is, because these mistakes are so public and the networks are (erroneously) seen as authorities, these mistakes take traction and are perpetuated by those that view these networks. So the mistakes grow, and more people use the language incorrectly. Yet again, I offer my professional services to the networks to assist them in improving the language skills of their on-air talent and super writers.

Unfortunately, even those writing the text that appeared on the big scoreboard got it wrong. In fact, even though Nine got it right occasionally, the scoreboard guys got it consistently wrong – at EVERY ground! Cricket Australia needs to take that one up.

Channel 7’s latest promo for My Kitchen Rules is giving me the shits. Here I am trying to alert the world to this awful misuse and abuse of the language, and they push out one of the worst examples of bad english I’ve heard publicly for a long time. And yet again, it’s the confusion over plurals that is their problem.

Here’s what their promo says:

“The father and son that Australia have taken to their hearts.”

FAAAARRRRRKKKKK!!!!

“Australia” is a country. A single country. One. It is NOT a population. If they want to refer to Australia, then they MUST use it as a singular. That means saying …

“The father and son that Australia has taken to its heart.”

That makes sense. That is correct grammar. Alternatively, if they want to refer to a population (a plural), then what about …

“The father and son that Australians have taken to their hearts.”

That also makes sense. That is also correct grammar.

Maybe it’s time that Channel 7 asked me to be their answer to the ABC’s SCOSE (Standing Committee on Spoken English). Of course, ABC’s SCOSE seems to get it wrong so many times too, so maybe the ABC needs to hire me too.

(PS – I’m open to either offer. Or both.)

You may remember my post from a little while ago about our poor old Australian Broadcasting Corporation suddenly being unable to work out the difference between plural and singular nouns. Well, their latest SCOSE report includes a section that seems to suggest they’re still struggling to understand it …

‘A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after it was asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.’  

Treating the Aboriginal leaders as a single entity is faintly ridiculous. Anyway, the head of the subject phrase is ‘leaders’, not ‘group’. So it’s better to say:

A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia are calling for an apology after they were asked to leave…

Again, Aunty appears to be saying that the subject in the first version is the ‘leaders’ and therefore it should be treated as a plural. But the word ‘group’ modifies it, making it singular. Though, in this case you could have used the plural in the second half of the sentence if you’d wanted to:”A group of young Aboriginal leaders from Central Australia is calling for an apology after they were asked to leave a backpackers resort in Alice Springs at the weekend.” No, that’s not clumsy, it’s quite legal.

UPDATE:

I am getting sick and tired of hearing this misuse of singular and plurals. This one tonight on Channel 7 …

“The Chinese government are funding …”

ARGH!!! Freakin’ idiots!!!! The word “government” is singular. You should be saying …

“The Chinese government IS funding …”

For god’s sake you morons, it’s not difficult!!

This is one that has irked me for years, and it seems no one is learning the error of their ways as yet. Here’s a typical sample from a description of a computer game package:

“VICTORIA COMPLETE comprises of the full VICTORIA and VICTORIA REVOLUTIONS …”

Freakin’ idiots. “Comprising” is one of those handful of words that has a different composition for each of its various forms. These are:

A comprises B and C

A is comprised of B and C

Confusing the two forms seems rampant these days. Fortunately there is a simple rule to help you poor fools remember how it works: “Rises alone”. That means “comprises” (rises) is used on its own, without any modifiers. Therefore, conversely, only “comprised” is accompanied by “is” and “of” (or in my first example, just “of”).

So now you know the rule. No more excuses.

Spam is the curse of every email system. It takes up a lot of bandwidth, requires sophisticated filtering to keep it from cluttering up your inbox, and every now and then actually fools someone into throwing enough money at them to keep the spammers interested.

Nevertheless, their ludicrously inane and unlikely emails are often filled with such gems of bad grammar and misuse of english that you have to smile. Take these for example, just arrived with my morning mail:

“This is a procedure that automatically occur when an invalid information is submitted during the log in process.”

 “NOW AS A MATTER OF THE URGENCY YOU ARE ADVICE TO CONTACT THE
DIRECTOR”

“EIGHT HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS WITH THE (BOA),
WHICH WAS PREVIOUSLY ON-HOLD IN THE TUNE THAT YOU ARE DEAD …”

 Actually, those last two are from a spam email that I just HAD to open when I saw the subject line:

“ATTENTION BENEFICIARY. (ARE YOU TRULY DEAD?)”

Gotta luv ’em! Yes, I’m dead, but please keep sending me email!! Curiously, that same one, which claimed to be from the Bank of Afrique went on to say that someone claiming my money had been arrested and handed over to the FBI. Wow – the FBI’s jurisdiction has been expanded into Africa? Remarkable!

Do people really fall for this shit? Surely anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see through it?