Mmmm... Tweed
When did Tony Blair become Gordon Brown? I work for a bloody newspaper and I didn't know Britain had a new prime minister until some nuff nuff on the news mentioned Prime Minster Brown's slow response to the flooding in the UK.
Then again, it had nothing to do with dole mums, Neighbours poppets or football, so perhaps the Herald Scum just skipped it altogether and I shouldn't feel so bad.
Last Friday night I sang karaoke at Romanza's restaurant in Burwood. I rocked with my cock out. Only not, you know, literally. Now I have discovered the karaoke tracks on iTunes and and currently singing at the top of my neighbour irritating lungs through the back catalogue of Peggy Lee. If my neighbour gets to run every power tool he owns at 8 am on a Sunday, I get to sing in the evening.
I am becoming a crabby, cranky letter writer, as per below, a letter to the editor of British trash mag "Paranormal", which I picked up on a whim because I had a whole lunchtime of braindedded timewasting ahead of me. Obviously I spend too much time thinking about my job. I have sent this off to the address provided for letters and feedback. I think I should just get myself a tweed suit and some sensible walking shoes and accept the inevitable.
To Whom It May Concern,
Today was the first time I have found your magazine in Melbourne (Australia) and I want to share with you what happened when I bought Issue 19 and read it during my lunchbreak at work. Perhaps I should first tell you about my work - I work for the highest selling daily newspaper in Melbourne. My job involves proof-reading the ads and personal notices that make up our classifieds each day, which are taken by operators in an inbound telephone environment. As a large number of these operators have an unexpected difficulty (given the nature of their profession) with spelling and grammar, my part in the process, correcting countless spelling mistakes, rebuilding shoddily constructed sentences and soothing abused apostrophes, is definitely full time labour.
Back to my story - I walked into the local newsagent and picked up a copy of Paranormal on a whim as I hadn't seen it before and am interested in the subject matter. Expecting some diversion, I settled into the cosiest corner of the lunchroom I could find and began to read.
Twenty irritated minutes later, I took up my trusted red marker and gave in to my urges to begin proofing your copy. If some of the articles that I read came into my copy desk queue at work I would consider them unpublishable and send them back with suggestions for improvement. The sheer amount of red ink that now marks the already obscure first half of Issue 19 means I won't be back for Issue 20.
While I absolutely applaud your policy of accepting articles from readers, and love the sensibility of a conceptual forum it lends to your publication, a little helping nudge from a polite but firmly editorial hand would go a long way toward improving the overall readability of your copy. To demonstrate, this virtually palindromic sentence from the opening article of Issue 19 by Nigel Wright: "All for offences as small as stealing small items or other minor offences." This awkwardness of style, while perfectly acceptable in copy written by an informed reader rather than a professional writer, makes the article in question painfully amateurish - a low budget patina which extends over the entire publication and could easily be fixed by a little editorial intervention to protect the integrity of your product.
As well as the badly phrased copy, the constant, jarring presence of grammatical errors made the magazine difficult for me to read or take seriously. As a sample: Page 44 "... she was in her daddies red car..." and "the side of her fathers' car." Page 41 "... I have experienced thing's..." And this one on Page 78 "Paranormal pride's itself..." Look familiar? It's from the the Editor's piece on that page. Have some pity on the poor apostrophes! An apostrophe is used to indicate contraction (as in "wouldn't") and possession (as in "Daddy's car"). It is never used to indicate the plural form of a word. The presence of the letter S usually accomplishes that quite well.
While I understand that any text based media written in a language as ridiculously convoluted as English will inevitably have a typo or two, or the odd grammatical error that slips past the proofers (Heaven knows the classifieds section suffers from this!), Paranormal boasts grammatical errors on nearly every single page. While I appreciate that the format of your magazine means that production costs are kept as low as possible (and how do you survive with hardly any advertising sold? Perhaps that would fix some problems!) surely there must be someone on staff who can at least proof read, if not edit, the copy of each edition before it goes to print.
In short, intervene and you'll have a better magazine. "By the people, for the people" works perfectly well, but only when the spelling and grammar of the people is quietly improved before each deadline.
Regards,
Jaimie Duncan
Then again, it had nothing to do with dole mums, Neighbours poppets or football, so perhaps the Herald Scum just skipped it altogether and I shouldn't feel so bad.
Last Friday night I sang karaoke at Romanza's restaurant in Burwood. I rocked with my cock out. Only not, you know, literally. Now I have discovered the karaoke tracks on iTunes and and currently singing at the top of my neighbour irritating lungs through the back catalogue of Peggy Lee. If my neighbour gets to run every power tool he owns at 8 am on a Sunday, I get to sing in the evening.
I am becoming a crabby, cranky letter writer, as per below, a letter to the editor of British trash mag "Paranormal", which I picked up on a whim because I had a whole lunchtime of braindedded timewasting ahead of me. Obviously I spend too much time thinking about my job. I have sent this off to the address provided for letters and feedback. I think I should just get myself a tweed suit and some sensible walking shoes and accept the inevitable.
To Whom It May Concern,
Today was the first time I have found your magazine in Melbourne (Australia) and I want to share with you what happened when I bought Issue 19 and read it during my lunchbreak at work. Perhaps I should first tell you about my work - I work for the highest selling daily newspaper in Melbourne. My job involves proof-reading the ads and personal notices that make up our classifieds each day, which are taken by operators in an inbound telephone environment. As a large number of these operators have an unexpected difficulty (given the nature of their profession) with spelling and grammar, my part in the process, correcting countless spelling mistakes, rebuilding shoddily constructed sentences and soothing abused apostrophes, is definitely full time labour.
Back to my story - I walked into the local newsagent and picked up a copy of Paranormal on a whim as I hadn't seen it before and am interested in the subject matter. Expecting some diversion, I settled into the cosiest corner of the lunchroom I could find and began to read.
Twenty irritated minutes later, I took up my trusted red marker and gave in to my urges to begin proofing your copy. If some of the articles that I read came into my copy desk queue at work I would consider them unpublishable and send them back with suggestions for improvement. The sheer amount of red ink that now marks the already obscure first half of Issue 19 means I won't be back for Issue 20.
While I absolutely applaud your policy of accepting articles from readers, and love the sensibility of a conceptual forum it lends to your publication, a little helping nudge from a polite but firmly editorial hand would go a long way toward improving the overall readability of your copy. To demonstrate, this virtually palindromic sentence from the opening article of Issue 19 by Nigel Wright: "All for offences as small as stealing small items or other minor offences." This awkwardness of style, while perfectly acceptable in copy written by an informed reader rather than a professional writer, makes the article in question painfully amateurish - a low budget patina which extends over the entire publication and could easily be fixed by a little editorial intervention to protect the integrity of your product.
As well as the badly phrased copy, the constant, jarring presence of grammatical errors made the magazine difficult for me to read or take seriously. As a sample: Page 44 "... she was in her daddies red car..." and "the side of her fathers' car." Page 41 "... I have experienced thing's..." And this one on Page 78 "Paranormal pride's itself..." Look familiar? It's from the the Editor's piece on that page. Have some pity on the poor apostrophes! An apostrophe is used to indicate contraction (as in "wouldn't") and possession (as in "Daddy's car"). It is never used to indicate the plural form of a word. The presence of the letter S usually accomplishes that quite well.
While I understand that any text based media written in a language as ridiculously convoluted as English will inevitably have a typo or two, or the odd grammatical error that slips past the proofers (Heaven knows the classifieds section suffers from this!), Paranormal boasts grammatical errors on nearly every single page. While I appreciate that the format of your magazine means that production costs are kept as low as possible (and how do you survive with hardly any advertising sold? Perhaps that would fix some problems!) surely there must be someone on staff who can at least proof read, if not edit, the copy of each edition before it goes to print.
In short, intervene and you'll have a better magazine. "By the people, for the people" works perfectly well, but only when the spelling and grammar of the people is quietly improved before each deadline.
Regards,
Jaimie Duncan