Author Topic: My favorite paper is not having a good day  (Read 805835 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #45 on: October 04, 2017, 03:00:01 PM »
Handicapping today's repeating offerings:

1. We begin with a writer who I know is not synonym-handicapped. So how did this unfortunate pile-on happen?

2. The actual quote from you-know-who: "Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico — and that's fine; we've saved a lot of lives."

The double-"whack" job quote from USA Today and published by The Record is below.




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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #46 on: October 05, 2017, 01:35:38 PM »
1.
The dullest generic caption occurs when more than one person is shown. The first person is mentioned and it always says that the second person "looks on" - a meaningless/useless phrase that shows not a drop of thought or imagination. They've used it quite a bit lately.............let's see how long it takes before that little gem pops up again (remember a Beatles' song called, "It Won't Be Long"?).

It took 8 days.............longer than I thought. (Click this one to enlarge)


2. Anyone who's aware of Yankee starter Luis Severino's first-inning meltdown two nights ago against the Twins knows that the "as" before his name should be "ask".


3. I'm not sure that the last five words are totally incorrect because I don't recall the play, but at first reading, a "dash home from first base" brings to mind Wrong-Way Corrigan. The word "dash" implies a quick burst over a short distance, like from first base 90' directly to home - something you'd get benched for. It's possible the play actually involved Harper running around all the bases from first to home, but the writing should be clearer, if that's the case.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #47 on: October 07, 2017, 12:00:00 PM »
1. Aside from the fact that "well-said" and "well-put" require hyphens, does the "...well said and well put..." comment mean that it should be printed twice? And just look at the "sentence" that follows:

"I JUST IT SOMETHING WE CAN MOVE FORWARD  ..  AND START AGAIN."

I'm not even sure how many words are missing from it or what "double-space, double periods, double space" means.


These two are just really dopey:

2. "3-for-27" is not a batting average. ".111" would be a batting average (and the correct one).

3. This series is a best-of five, meaning that it takes a minimum of 3 games to win the series. Sunday's game will be Game 3, so OF COURSE it's necessary.

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #48 on: October 08, 2017, 11:17:11 AM »
This was an article on the front page of the local section of today's Record about yesterday's Meadowlands Birding Festival. The writer mentions that "about 1,000 people" attended and he interviewed Bergen County Audubon Society President Don Torino. His opening paragraph identifies "Egrets, greater yellowlegs, pintail ducks and a pelican were among the winged species spotted in DeKorte Park...".

So why do the captions on the accompanying photos offer nothing more in the way of identification than "a bird"?

Not very informative...

And where the flock are all these "people" who are mentioned in the captions? A caption is meant to identify what is shown in the picture.

Do you see "many people" ID-ing birds or flocking around?

More sloppy captioning...


« Last Edit: October 08, 2017, 11:28:10 AM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #49 on: October 09, 2017, 12:52:58 PM »
One odd word, one missing word and two extra words:

1. What is a "huge" fly ball? As far as I know, they're all the same size. "Calculated how room he had..."? Can I buy a "much"?

2. Can I sell an "and" and an "a"? Maybe I could trade them for that missing "much".

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Offline Victor E Sasson

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #51 on: October 10, 2017, 03:47:57 PM »
MAJOR mess today, plus one small one left over from yesterday.

Yesterday:

1. The front page of the sports section had two articles trumpeting the fact that the Yankees won Game 3 and avoided being swept. On to Game 4...............

2. ...........well, hold up on that. Page 2S didn't get the news and still says "if necessary" regarding last night's Game 4. I wonder if they'll do the same stupid thing regarding Game 5.


Today:

3. Same as #1, except change 3 to 4 and 4 to 5.

4. Same as #2 (You had to ask?). Page 1S lets you know that there's a  DEFINITE Game 5, while 2S doubts its necessity.

(5,6,7 - more contradicting uncertainty):

5. Page 3S claims that there's no indication about the severity of Brandon Marshall's injury or his possible return.

6. Maybe Page 3S should read Page 4S' headline..........

7. ........but wait - in the article with that headline, uncertainly rears its ugly (and not too bright) head yet again! And Sterling Shepard has the least severe what? Yeah - I know the answer, but you're supposed to actually write it in the paper. Sheesh!

8. Compared to everything else, this is relatively minor, but there are two unnecessary commas preceding an "and" in one paragraph (Pssst! "And" negates the need for a comma in these situations............it's redundant).

9. Problem with plurals.............plus, it's followed by another unnecessary comma ("or" negates the need for the comma).

10. When writers want to make quotes clearer, they insert the correct (or missing) word where it belongs in parentheses. It's hard to decipher what Luis Severino actually said, but it's made worse when a writer puts in the wrong word. You don't "give the extra mile" (no effort implied there).............you "go the extra mile" (THAT'S extra effort). And "mile" is in parentheses - what could it possibly be replacing?

Maybe the Sports Section should be renamed the Puzzle Section. What a mess!

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #52 on: October 11, 2017, 12:42:37 PM »
1. "...AS it was."

2. Double error in the same place: in the print edition, "the" is missing before the word "notion". In the online edition, both "the" AND "notion" are missing.

3. "...is moving"? Moved. "Starting this week..."? It started last week. Should we take bets on whether or not they'll print the same thing next week?

« Last Edit: October 11, 2017, 12:44:46 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #53 on: October 12, 2017, 01:14:57 PM »
1. Egad! Even the editorial page isn't immune.

2. New word: "hoered"

3. Missing word" "one"

4,5. It's bad enough when an entire quote is essentially repeated immediately following the same quote, but the repeat quotes are slightly re-written. Is this to fill space and maybe no one will notice?
By the way -  these same, nearly-identical double errors came from two different articles on the same page...........and both were written by the same, highly-respected writer (who I doubt made the errors).



« Last Edit: October 12, 2017, 01:16:37 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #54 on: October 14, 2017, 01:45:26 PM »
1. We all know what photo captions are, right? And most of us are aware that they belong as close as possible to the photo they're describing. For many photo captions lately, someone at The Record disagrees.

On the front page of today's sports section, the lead photo is a large shot taken at last night's Yankees/Astros ALCS Game 1. Its caption is placed below a lot of writing from two stories, the ACLS schedule and some large, bold-faced statistics. It's over 3 inches from the photo that it's desperately trying to describe, but less than 1.5 inches from a hockey game photo.


2. Speaking of captions,

1.
The dullest generic caption occurs when more than one person is shown. The first person is mentioned and it always says that the second person "looks on" - a meaningless/useless phrase that shows not a drop of thought or imagination. They've used it quite a bit lately.............let's see how long it takes before that little gem pops up again (remember a Beatles' song called, "It Won't Be Long"?).

It took 8 days.............longer than I thought.

Nine days later, they doubled up on the vapid vacuity (redundancy intentional) in two articles ON THE SAME PAGE, with one story on top of the other:

a. Without mentioning any other people in the picture (it could have simply stated that the two managers were meeting with the umpiring crew, it just says that the managers "looked on". That's it? Looked on what? Usually, that idiotic phrase is used after some other person or action is mentioned.

b. This time, it's only one manager who.......... all together now............"looks on".  The caption claims that this occurred during batting practice - and maybe it did - but it's just a shot of the manager. There's not a speck of batting practice imagery to be seen in it.

These are both empty-headed, say-nothing captions.

So, until next time............


3. Can we all agree that relief pitchers follow starters in a baseball game? That's super-basic stuff, but this caption says that manager Joe Girardi is doing the relieving.

Strange thing for a former catcher to do.

For the record (and for The Record)..........Chad Green relieved Severino.


4. Somebody needs a reminder to not leave out any words.


 
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #55 on: October 15, 2017, 12:59:59 PM »
Wow - contributions from 3 different sections!

1. "its"

2. "it's"

3. Geez - they spelled it correctly in the same sentence just 6 words prior............

4. Corrected below

5. "Severino" + a different correction below

6. "ala" is not a word. "a la" is the common use, but "à la" is the technically correct use.

7. One addition and one subtraction (below)

8. Where are Ahmad and Reham? Why was it important to give the ages of people who aren't shown?





« Last Edit: October 15, 2017, 01:17:54 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #56 on: October 16, 2017, 02:00:00 PM »
Things started out interestingly in the sports section and then quickly went downhill.

They used an eye-catching, one-word headline in the print edition that anyone who watched the Jets game yesterday would understand immediately. In very bold letters, it says "ROBBED.", with the top half of the letters in black (and outside the picture) and the bottom half of the letters in white and inside the picture.

Online, there are actually two versions: one copies all the pages of the print edition, looking just like the newspaper (online print) and another that's basically one long column of nice, solid-looking print (online straight). Sometimes, I show one version and sometimes another.

When it comes to this particular picture, I'm showing all 3, since they're all quite different.

1. The two-tone print edition, as described above

2. The online version of the supposed exact copy of the print edition made the letters 100% black.

3. The online straight version showed only what was within the borders of the picture: the bottom halves of the white letters, including slivers of the black top halves - rather bizarre-looking.

One other problem: why is there a period after the word? Periods end sentences and this isn't a sentence. It would be a different story if the headline said "WE WUZ ROBBED."............but it doesn't.



4. The 0-5 Giants were absolute underdogs going into Mile-High Stadium - or whatever they call it these days - as reflected in head coach Ben McAdoo's statement in this paragraph, yet the beginning of the paragraph states that they were favored to win by 13.5 points. How did that go unnoticed?



5. There's an "a" where an "and" should be and a space where a hyphen should be between "especially" and "powerful".



6. When filling space at the end of an article with a scoring rundown, chronology is always in order (do we watch games by starting at the end and working our way backward?). Here, apparently, someone thought it would be a good idea to do it blog-like: latest post first. It's like reading an email thread - start at the bottom and work your way up.



7. Over in "Better Living", someone forgot "Better Grammar" and neglected to use a "Neither" before using "Nor". It just doesn't make any sense when read.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #57 on: October 17, 2017, 03:00:06 PM »
It just never ends.........


1. Does the word "laugher" refer to the game or the "score" that precedes it?


2. I see we're back to this stupidity again. The Astros are ahead two games to one going into tonight's game. FOUR games are needed to win the series. How is there a question as to whether tomorrow's game is necessary?


3. The "t" needs an "o".


4. The "It' " needs an "s".


5. False: Toms River to the Bronx is 90 miles and takes an hour and 42 minutes to get there. Toms River to the Philadelphia Phillies ballpark is 62 miles away and the drive takes an hour and a half. DO SOME RESEARCH!


6. This sentence is screaming for a comma after "Montgomery".


7. This is not Aaron Hicks.


8. THIS is Aaron Hicks.


9. This is REALLY an empty-headed caption. Exactly how does one "get ready to round third base"? And if there IS an answer to that, how does this photo illustrate that preparation?

At the bare minimum, why not just write that he's rounding third base? Boring, but it's least it's factual.


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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #58 on: October 18, 2017, 01:00:53 PM »
1. The title of a book should be set apart by either italics or quotation marks.

2. "the ugliest of swings" would be a single item, so the verb should be "hits". The fact that the plural "swings" is in the phrase is irrelevant.

3. I think he asked "to meet her" - not "to met her".

4. Again? Why is there a question about Friday's Game 6 when the teams are tied at 2 games apiece and the series is a best of seven? It can't possibly end before Friday, so the game is kinda necessary.

Duh!


« Last Edit: October 18, 2017, 01:06:16 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline BLeafe

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Re: My favorite paper is not having a good day
« Reply #59 on: October 19, 2017, 01:30:02 PM »
A quintet of corrections awaits below:


« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 01:35:40 PM by BLeafe »
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