I'm not sure how this happened. But I was reading the Japan edition (in English) of the Herald Tribune (actually Asahi Shimbun / Herald Tribune), and there is a piece on Iran by somebody named Stanley Weiss. And there is a blurb summarizing the article, that reads, "A nuclear-armed Iran may be worrisome, but don't loose any business over it."

I wonder how that got in there...

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As above, so below

Probably by typing.

The real question is how most such mistakes manage to be caught.

Oh, and there's an error in the thread title. It should read "Relatively
minor and particularly difficult to catch" rather than "Bad".

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

I don't know. Maybe my standards are too high, but I expect that newspapers should be flawless in terms of spelling. Plus, it's a common mistake that I think editors should be on the lookout for.

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As above, so below

Ooh... is this going to turn into a 'how bad is journalist English?' thread? Should we have another one for just how bad the actual journalism is? *grins*

Jens, given the state of the Media, your standards are impossibly high. Investigative Journalism these days means 'look & see if there's another press release' & writing a piece for publication requires neither good spelling nor good phrasing. And leave grammar out of it all together.

EDIT: Actually that's a bit too tough on them - in Australia we have the ABC & SBS TV channels which do a remarkably good job of both presentation within normal bounds of good English AND a pretty decent job of investigative journalism.

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* Never doubt there is Truth; just doubt that you have it!

This, boys and girls, is why there is generally a job called "copy editor," whose entire job is to catch simple, easy errors like "lose"/"loose."

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Yes, indeed.

Was one for the school newspaper. Caught a headline that would have read "Congratulari Football Team!" and an article about municipal activities that would have included "sever construction" for the local town's septic tank replacement project.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Lost your subjects, had only predicates left.

Standard method for brief articles. Subject understood. Got it?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Are there still working copy editors? I don't doubt the need for their services. It's just that judging by the quality of most printed materials and (especially) websites, I assumed there had been some terrible purge of copy editors a few decades ago, the scattered survivors going into seclusion, forsaking their use of proper spelling and punctuation in a desperate attempt to avoid detection.

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"How many times have you gone rooting through your junk drawer, muttering to yourself, 'where'd I put that gun?'"

This headline would have been correct on Centauri Prime.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Microsoft Word is far cheaper than competence.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

Speaking of 'journalist English', a few days ago I came across an article, commenting on the US presidential race, headed: Who is going to be the best president....
Considering there are only two contenders, this is just amazing to see in print. I reckon the copy editor was on vacation.

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clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Simple and easy to make. Not simple and easy to catch reliably.
What I'm saying is that I doubt there are any words so short that
are easier to misspell and more difficult to catch. Lose/loose is
about as hard as they get, at that length.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

This seems like an appropriate thread in which to announce to the world
that I got 'laid' a few minutes ago while playing Word Yacht.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Who is going to be the best president, but not before What serves a term.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

Congratulari.

Was it good for you?

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

Remember to use protection!

Speaking of bad journalism, I read a quip in one of our bigger newspapers about the recent stabbing in Akihabara, Tokyo.

The leader of the Swedish national Judo team was quoted to say "We were in the area... just coming out of a store. If we'd been a minute earlier we would have been right where it happened."
The whole thing was written as "Oh no, our sportsteam nearly got stabbed". I'm pretty sure what the captain meant was "If we'd been there a minute earlier, we might have been able to stop him."

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

There are fewer and fewer paid copy editors; that is assuredly true. And it is, as mentioned, because of spell check and grammar check. The fact that spell check doesn't catch anything that's a real word and that grammar check is sometimes simply wrong doesn't seem to occur to anyone with the power to hire and fire copy editors.

And I can promise you that a good copy editor is on the lookout especially for such basic errors, simply because they're the ones that occur most often in a good writer's copy.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I think it's hard to say. The guy drove into the crowd with a truck first, and being a Judo wrestler wouldn't necessarily help you much in that department.

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As above, so below