What happened to editing?
I am very confused.
Let me explain. I read A LOT. I read books often, maybe 10 a year, but I read all-day, everyday online. I read the news. I read a million blogs, both big and small. To hazard a guess, I would say that I read somewhere in the ballpark of 150,000 words a day. I think that’s a lot.
I can’t tell you how often I am reading an article at a small news site or tech blog and I have to remind myself that what I am reading is written by amateur reporters, with next-to no budget, or written by someone at some company who is NOT a reporter at all, but is just conveying information about a project. I can forgive them. But then there are times (at least five or six times a day, mind you) when I read something by the major news outlets and the grammar is flat-out wrong, or you can tell that the author was playing around with wording, and says the same thing twice:
“It is a long extradition process, but in the past, the U.S. has maintained a strong relationship with the Portuguese law enforcement in the past.”
That’s from Fox (FOX!) News.
And that’s just one example from that article. Read it. Please. I’ll wait.
…
…
…
See what I mean?
…
said in statement… (in statement?)
an FBI statement read.
the statement read.
the statement read.
the statement read.
according to the statement.
…
Those are the end of six consecutive paragraphs. How is this good writing? editing? reporting???
Maybe I should keep a list…. Hmmm…
Whatever happened to proper editors actually reading the things they publish? I miss newspapers all of a sudden.