This is exactly why you have proofreaders:
The Death Zone
Expedition organisers only learned of the avalanche after a group of climbers arrived back at the mountain's base camp on Saturday evening.
The mountaineers included Koreans, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Dutchman and Italians, reports say, but exact details remain unclear.
They at an altitude known as the Death Zone, where oxygen levels are not high enough to sustain life.
I keep writing all these really awful jokes here, but eleven people died doing something I will never attempt and I am trying to reconnect with the human race, so I keep deleting the jokes. The view must be amazing, and all the more so for the struggle.
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Monday, August 04, 2008
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Newspaper Websites: You're Doing it Wrong, Washingtonpost.com
To: Washington Post
Attention: Web Editor and General Management
Re: www.washingtonpost.com
Your website sucks. It sucks almost as much as the guy I saw last night on Clara Barton Parkway driving a fucking Firebird with a bumper sticker that read "Back Off My Nutz" and with a pair of the plastic testicles hanging from his bumper. You might wonder why The Genius has laid a claim of suckage upon thine internet personage, and I'll tell you: your require some bullshit login for every damn article.
When I click on the link for this story about the hippo losing his home, I want to read the article and not see some useless fucking login. I would not mind logging in to peruse your archives, but I am sick and tired of having to log in to view the content of every podunk website out there.
It's also a frikking jumble. I am a web savvy genius and I find it hard to locate information that I want on your website. You need to clean that shit up. You have only three columns, which is good, but when I think I have reached the bottom of the page, the "Diversions" scroll bar, I haven't. There is a ton of content below that bar, but I was fooled and you can bet others are. Clean it up. Kitchen sinks should be left in the kitchen.
You're a national newspaper. Report national news and do it well. Leave the local news to the various Gazettes around town.
On a final note, your movie critics are terribad. Hire me instead, I can guarantee that I will at least watch the entire movie and won't write from the perspective of a balding, jilted journalism major.
Attention: Web Editor and General Management
Re: www.washingtonpost.com
Your website sucks. It sucks almost as much as the guy I saw last night on Clara Barton Parkway driving a fucking Firebird with a bumper sticker that read "Back Off My Nutz" and with a pair of the plastic testicles hanging from his bumper. You might wonder why The Genius has laid a claim of suckage upon thine internet personage, and I'll tell you: your require some bullshit login for every damn article.
When I click on the link for this story about the hippo losing his home, I want to read the article and not see some useless fucking login. I would not mind logging in to peruse your archives, but I am sick and tired of having to log in to view the content of every podunk website out there.
It's also a frikking jumble. I am a web savvy genius and I find it hard to locate information that I want on your website. You need to clean that shit up. You have only three columns, which is good, but when I think I have reached the bottom of the page, the "Diversions" scroll bar, I haven't. There is a ton of content below that bar, but I was fooled and you can bet others are. Clean it up. Kitchen sinks should be left in the kitchen.
You're a national newspaper. Report national news and do it well. Leave the local news to the various Gazettes around town.
On a final note, your movie critics are terribad. Hire me instead, I can guarantee that I will at least watch the entire movie and won't write from the perspective of a balding, jilted journalism major.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Doing My Homework
I fucked up my homework assignment for last Wednesday's editing class. I forgot about it over the long weekend and left it to try and do on the bus to class. We had been assigned an Aviation Magazine (or some such title) article to proofread at the lowest level of authority. This level of authority means that we query the author instead of researching and making changes and identify errors in spelling and grammar. We were advised to look for the really big mistakes more than the smaller mistakes, but the smaller mistakes are important as well.
In the second paragraph, the article said that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were used in Vietnam. I thought this sounded bogus, so I circled it to be queried.1 I continued reading and scanning but only got to the end of the first page before I had to stop as the train had filled up and I had to fight to get off at my stop.
After being chided by the instructor for not completing the assignment, I felt like an ass. I was saved, sort of, when the instructor learned that most of the class had slacked on this assignment as well and gave us another week to work on it. I glanced at the article during the class break after our proofreading marks quiz and spotted the big mistake she had kept trying to get us to notice: the article has no conclusion.2 The article cruises on discussing the merits, flaws, uses, and designs of UAVs but ends without a conclusion two paragraphs after starting a new topic in the UAV discussion. This article was not a draft, it was a final copy that was printed. Somebody got righteously shafted for this one.
1 Having just searched "UAVs used in Vietnam", I am surprised to say that I was wrong about that one. You learn something new every day.
2 I am still not sure whether I like editing and proofreading because it is a whole career that will be spent telling people how wrong they are or because it is a vital role in crafting pieces of art like Motherless Brooklyn or 1984, both of which I happen to reading now.3
3 I am also reading From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain. Fun stuff.
In the second paragraph, the article said that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were used in Vietnam. I thought this sounded bogus, so I circled it to be queried.1 I continued reading and scanning but only got to the end of the first page before I had to stop as the train had filled up and I had to fight to get off at my stop.
After being chided by the instructor for not completing the assignment, I felt like an ass. I was saved, sort of, when the instructor learned that most of the class had slacked on this assignment as well and gave us another week to work on it. I glanced at the article during the class break after our proofreading marks quiz and spotted the big mistake she had kept trying to get us to notice: the article has no conclusion.2 The article cruises on discussing the merits, flaws, uses, and designs of UAVs but ends without a conclusion two paragraphs after starting a new topic in the UAV discussion. This article was not a draft, it was a final copy that was printed. Somebody got righteously shafted for this one.
1 Having just searched "UAVs used in Vietnam", I am surprised to say that I was wrong about that one. You learn something new every day.
2 I am still not sure whether I like editing and proofreading because it is a whole career that will be spent telling people how wrong they are or because it is a vital role in crafting pieces of art like Motherless Brooklyn or 1984, both of which I happen to reading now.3
3 I am also reading From the Notebooks of Doctor Brain. Fun stuff.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)