Unfortunately, the targeted destruction of the sub-editing class by news media management - who somehow couldn't see the value in making sure everything they printed was actually correct - means there are a lot less subs to moan about this shit.
As a result, there are more and more tiny little errors creeping through. Not big, factual mistakes, just small errors of language, grammar and punctuation. Here are 11 examples, which you'll be seeing more and more of in the future, as those crusties fade away:
(Note: this mainly applies to print and web journalism, where all you've got are the printed words. Nobody in broadcast journalism needs to give a fuck about where the apostrophe will go when it's only going to be spoken out loud. There will also be differences in pure style between newsrooms - on whether there is a capital G in Government, or on honorifics - and every single place has a different way of doing the percentage sign - in one it'll be %, in another it'll be per cent, and a third will be percent. Nobody ever agrees on this.)
It's its, not it's: A wayward apostrophe in a three-letter word is one of the most common little errors you'll see. The clumsy, confusing and contradictory rules of English language mean the apostrophe only goes between the T and the S when you are shortening 'it is'. It's not the possessive - ie 'the company found that it's products was killing all the ducks' is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's the same deal for 'let's' and other smooshed-together small words - if the sentence makes no sense when you substitute 'it is' for 'it's' as you read it, you're on the wrong path, pal.
An amount is never 'over', it's 'more than': There are not 'over 100 shitgibbons pooping into their hats', there are always 'more than 100 shitgibbons pooping into their hats'. Even though the usual rule of written news is that one word is always better than two, 'over' should always be turned into 'more than'.
There is no ten, and no 9: All numbers up to 10 are written out as words, everything 10 or more is in numerals. Small exceptions include when you're writing up small numbers with decimal points, or - for some reason - when talking about a child's age (they're always a '7-year-old').
Approximately isn't around, it's about: If there isn't an exact number of something, there aren't 'around 5000 dildos', because that means there are a hell of a lot of dildos lying around you. There are, of course, 'about 5000 dildos'.
You can't collide with a stationery object: Two things have to be in motion for a collision, so a car can't collide with a tree, unless the tree is being blown across the road, or is a fuckin' Triffid.
Every paragraph of speech doesn't need speech marks at the end of it: If there are multiple paragraphs of spoken text in a row in a story, there is no need to put speech marks at the end of any paragraph, except the first one. It all just flows. After the it's debacle, probably the most common little error seen on the big news websites.
Sewage passes through sewerage: This one is always easy to remember, because the little shit goes through the big pipe.
It didn't happen in the last year, it was the past: Saying 'the US has made some shitty decisions in electing their highest officials in the last year' is incorrect, because that implies that 2016 was the last year ever. It should be 'the US has made some shitty decisions in electing their highest officials in the past year' Then again, that demented piss-weasel in the White House is probably going to kill us all, so maybe that one is technically correct.
A comma in thousands: Any number under ten thousand doesn't have a comma, so you don't get things like '7,543'. After 10,000, go crazy.
You can't be killed after the fact: Headlines that tell you somebody has been killed after a gardening accident should be saying they were 'killed in the accident', or 'died after the accident'. Killing is in the now, you die afterwards.
Is it less than, or fewer?: Fuck, we always get this one wrong too, (and we're also screwed on the differences between affect and effect), and we can't find a sub to ask, so figure it out for yourself. Ask Stannis Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros. Stannis knows the score.
- Steve Lombard / Ron Troupe
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