From: "Stone Gordonssen" <stonegordonssen@...>
Subject: Re: Lukashenka (jara: Country names still needed)
> > > Well, copy-editors/proofreaders are on the decline in Sweden both
among
> > > the press and book publishers. I used to be able to make a decent
> >income
> > > in this field up to about five years ago.
> >
> >That's bad. Is there any known specific reason for this, or did
error-free
> >writing just go out of fashion?
>
> In the USA, proofreaders have decdlined as the use of word processor
> applications and spell checkers have increased. This translates to more
> immediate profit for a company as they don't have to "waste" money paying
a
> specialist. I. however, am evermore annoyed/entertained with the
increasing
> incidence of totally incorrect words in books & newspapers being chosen
> mindlessly as replacements for someone's spelling errors.
If anyone happens to get a copy of USA Today (a very common nationwide
paper), take a look at the lead article on the attacks in Riyadh. The first
or second sentence has something like "the explosions ... was", as if the
writer, in writing the embedded clause, lost the train of thought of whether
the subject was plural or singular. An easy mistake to make in speech with
a long inserted bit between the verb and the subject, but we don't get a
chance to change things we've just said. In print it looks horrible, and
really detracts from my sense of the value of that paper.