in the raw

The OU Daily, local campus paper reviewed a new sushi restaurant in the area. They had the following to say:

A square sushi bar sits in the restaurants center like an island.

The omission of an apostrophe here changes the word from a possessive to a plural. Not acceptable.

From a style standpoint, I take issue with the article repeatedly referring to the restaurant as "in the raw," quotes included. Having not been to this particular restaurant, I cannot say whether the quotes are actually part of the name or not, but I would guess not. This theory seems to be discredited by their later use of the possessive as "in the raw's" - with the possessive inside the quotes. My impression is that they're there to distinguish the lower-case name from the rest of the text. Again, not acceptable. If the restaurant chooses to spell its name that way, it should be preserved that way. You don't see people writing about "McDonald's" or "Subway," for example.

Source: http://oudaily.com/news/2009/apr/28/sushi-restaurant-offers-interactive-experience/

Did you know that...?

mental_floss (and yes, the official name is all lower-case) recently posted an interesting article on uncommon sports rules. It contained this error:

Pitchers rely on the rosin bag to keep their hands try for an optimal grip on the ball, and MLB rules strictly monitor the use of the rosin bag.

Source: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/25042

That depends on what the definition of 'is' is...

This article from Kotaku is the first I've read about the game Fairytale Fights. It looks interesting. Too bad they left out their verbs from this sentence:

Fairytale Fights a hack and slash platformer due out this coming holiday season on the Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.

Of course, the missing verb here is "is." I am, however impressed with Kotaku's coinage of the term "co-opportunties" (for "cooperative opportunities") in this article. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen it used anywhere else. Very creative.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5230809/everybody-was-fairytale-fighting

That's some mighty tasty pain!

In another Boing Boing post, this one about a cool off-road recumbent bicycle, we see again how a simple typo can change a sentence. Here, the author quotes an employee at Beserker Cycle Design, who says:

It was designed by our CEO Adam Stephens after a nasty meeting between his carbon fiber Kestrel and a 12-food drop left him with some back injuries.

Aside from the fact that this injury has nothing to do with food, the Boing Boing crew gives no source for their quote! I couldn't find anywhere to look up if this was a mistake on the part of Boing Boing or the BCD employee. How's that for journalism?

Source: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/28/berserker-cycles-off.html

Hide and Seek?

It's easy to make a typo or skip a letter when writing out a quick blog post. Not so simple, I imagine, would be skipping an entire word. This seems to be the case in the following, from a Boing Boing Gadgets post about using Nike+ to help train when running.

What irked me about the idea of running was that I had nothing to measure my progress against. "It feels good" and "it improves heart health" were too amorphous and unquantifiable for me. I needed something that would keep count the way we keep score in basketball or volleyball, the I know I just climbed a 5-10b at the climbing gym or rocked a double black diamond skiing.

What I want to focus on is there in the last sentence. It just feels incomplete. My best guess, she was trying to describe the feeling of accomplishment and left out the "feeling" part at the end. Another complaint: since this is being used as a descriptor, a sort of compound adjective, it should be hyphenated - "the I-know-I-just-did-that-cool-stuff feeling." Perhaps it's just my personal opinion, but I think it serves a purpose here.

Source: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/28/how-nike-plus-is-hel.html

From Kotaku:

We've you can find a video of Batman taking on one such level here.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5224844/play-as-the-joker-in-arkham-asylum-ps3

Transcription errors

I'm sure errors happen all the time when transcribing conversations and interviews. There are just so many nuances to the spoken word that it may be difficult capturing them in writing. That said, there are still mistakes that should be avoided like the plague. From Joystiq's interview with Epic Games President Michael Capps, speaking about company policy for programmers working long hours:

Please don't give me everything you've got right now cause your gonna burn out.

It's a classic your/you're mistake. I can only assume the error is on the side of Joystiq, since they are the ones reporting on the interview, and that Epic didn't provide the transcript.

Then, later in the interview, Joystiq records Capps making this statement:

In 2006, our voluntary turnover rate was 1.3%. In 2007, it 1.1%. In 2008 it was 1.03%.

Again, certain assumptions must be made here, but I feel justified in doing so. I think it is clear that Capps is an intelligent man and would not simply forget basic English sentence structure in the middle of an interview. Joystiq simply forgot to include the verb there.

Even further in the interview, Joystiq asks the question:

So what are your thoughts on, or I guess, more elaborate thoughts on the holiday release schedule – besides that it's terrible – and whether or not that has an affect on Epic as the provider of middleware for a lot of the games that are coming out during the holiday season.

In a single (albeit lengthy) article, Joystiq has succeeded in both a your/you're mistake and an affect/effect error.

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/22/joystiq-interview-epics-michael-capps-responds-to-accusations/

When good sentences go bad...

As I have mentioned previously, errors in grammar can unintentionally change the meaning of a word or sentence. Here's an example from Joystiq's preview of Bioshock 2:

As we were taking down a series of hallways, we'd catch a glimpse of her zipping around a corner, or maybe just her shadow.

From the context of the article, it is evident that the reviewer was led, or taken, down a series of hallways, though from the sentence, one could conclude that he was doing some kind of demolition work!

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/23/joystiq-impressions-bioshock-2/

Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department

From the OU Daily (the local campus paper):

Anyone who regularly reads this column regularly knows Robert Kirkman is one of my favorite comic book writers.

Source: http://oudaily.com/news/2009/apr/22/week-comics-kick-ass-no-6-invincible-no-61/

Demigod

The real trick with spelling errors is that sometimes a simple typo or missing letter can completely change the word, or even the meaning of the sentence. Take, for example, the following statement from Kotaku's Demigod review, where players are confused with payers:

Depending on the options chosen before battle and the payers involved, games can be quick and dirty or long and drawn out.

The same post also contains the statement that the reviewer completed "several cutom online multiplayer battles." At least in this case, the typo didn't result in a different word.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5223353/demigod-review-aspiring-to-godhood

They really should know better.

It's one thing when a report on a product contains errors, but it's quite another when the product itself has typos. The following video, from D3 Publisher, was posted on Kotaku:



Edit: If you're still having trouble spotting the mistake, look around the 10 second mark. You'd really think a company would be able to get their own name right!

Source: http://kotaku.com/5222191/whats-wrong-with-this-d3-publisher-trailer

Again with the verbs!

From Kotaku:

Using a 14-year-old volunteer, it was able to expose 12 shops who selling mature titles.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5219258/uk-undercover-operation-reveals-illegal-game-selling

Possessive vs. Plural

In an article on a recent Street Fighter IV tournament, Joystiq had the following to say:

What we didn't know when this tournament was announced, however, was that a brief "international title championship" would take place immediately following the battles end.

D'oh!

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/19/justin-wong-wins-national-sfiv-tourney-daigo-remains-world-cham/

Accept it: There are no exceptions

This one's right up there next to the horrible there/their/they're mistakes:

Another advantage is that Amazon excepts trade-ins for many more platforms, going so far as to even accept NES titles.

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/16/amazon-trade-in-values-lag-behind-gamestop/

Huh?

And when I told the guy I would decide tomorrow wouldn't stop talking, blah, blah, blah.

This statement came in a post about a conversation with a chatty salesman.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5212877/does-the-hard-sell-work

Again with the verbs?

As I stated in a previous post, verbs should not be difficult to use in English (unlike some other languages). Nonetheless, Kotaku printed the following:

Exasperated, Fallon flail his way through the game, saying,"What happened? What do I do? How do I get out? I'm getting exhausted."

Simply put, describing action that happened in the past should be done in the past tense. Even assuming it is supposed to be present tense, there is no subject-verb agreement there.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5214233/late-night-host-waggles-through-wii-punch+out

Sometimes, a simple typo can change things immensely. From the following headline, "Ban together" implies a sort of team-up for a prohibition, while "Band together" is more a team-up of collaboration.

Marvel and AAFES Ban Together to Produce New Avengers Comic Books

Source: http://www.marvel.com/news/all.7417.Marvel_and_AAFES_Ban_Together_to_Produce_New_Ave?utm_source=rss+news+story+feed&utm_medium=rss+link&utm_content=story+feed&utm_campaign=rss+feeds

It's a 2-for-1!!

From Gizmodo:

It's like a single replacement for a chair, and coffee.

Absolutely unnecessary comma there, then, in the very next sentence, a bit of misspelling.

I find that physiologically it also makes a great alternative to the sitting position, where one's back and gluts and neck are constantly stretched while the hip flexors and abs are constantly compressed but unused.

This is unfortunate, because 'glut' is actually a noun and fits perfectly into the sentence from a grammar perspective. It's just not the word he meant to use.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5210799/samurai-ergonomics

Verbs aren't nouns!!

In some languages (like my specialty, German) verbs can be used as nouns with no perceptible change in spelling. Not so in English. Witness the following:

That tube in front looks a lot like something that is controlled by breathe.

'Breath' is of course the noun form, while 'breathe' is the verb. Also acceptable would have been the gerund, the verb-as-noun version 'breathing.'

Source: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/13/book-time-a-physical.html

Why so tense?

Verb tenses shouldn't be difficult (at least not in English).

Did you know that Engadget has a moratorium against cover Monster Cable products in response to all these tactics?

Source: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/04/09/monster-cable-out-of.html

Weird....

This one just makes absolutely no sense:

Take photos of them in—camouflaged (or not) on the ATM—and then e-mail them to us at tips@gizmodo.com with the subject line "Card Skimmer Beatdown."

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5204551/card-skimmer-beatdown-we-want-you

Slip of the Finger

Quotation marks always come in pairs, one to introduce the quote, one to announce the end. So it should come as no surprise, then, that I thought the article title was simply "Warning" at first glance:

The four page article "Warning" Far Cry 2 is still a broken game" details the chronology of the game's issues from the first reports of crashes to the promised patches in the Far Cry 2 forums.

In actuality, the second quotation mark should be a colon, a key which rests immediately next to the quotes on a keyboard. A simple typo, to be sure, and yet it does result in changing the meaning of the sentence, at least partially.

Depressing, isn't it?

Only a day has passed since the game was announced, but Six Days in Fallujah is already stirring up controversy among veterans, families and peace groups, according to GamePolitics.

Today's post is far from exciting. A simple misplaced comma, nothing more. The truth is, the headlines recently just aren't interesting enough for me to want to read the articles, so this is the best I could find from what I've read. A depressing state of affairs, indeed.

Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/07/gleaning-potential-controversy-from-konamis-six-days-in-falluj/

2 for the price of 1!

The Pwn or Die blog, though far from being "professional" journalism, should still hold itself to the standards of English language. In this post, I found two glaring mistakes:

In the early stages their would be few Zombies that are slower, but as you advance so do the undead.

Then later:

We would however love to see one added.

Though not as glaring as the their/there/they're mistake in the first post, the omission of commas to set off the interjection 'however' is quite erroneous.

Source: http://www.pwnordie.com/blog/posts/14749

Again with the names!

This one comes from the headline of a recent post. Proper names are something to be extra careful with.

Brett Farve playing NES on the day he was drafted

This particular name has given many reporters problems, but you'd expect they'd have it by now.

Source: http://www.myextralife.com/2009/04/02/brett-farve-playing-nes-on-the-day-he-was-drafted/

April Fool's!

Another typo from Kotaku:

Japanese magazine Famitsu goes on sale on Friday, so often new titles are announced them.

Source: http://kotaku.com/5193103/is-tri+ace-announcing-a-new-multi+plaform-rpg