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/