Sunday, October 19, 2014

Hiatus and Why Can't The Independent Get Snoop's Name Right?

Hello! How are my loyal readers doing? It's been a damn long time since I last posted and it seems that the internet is set to collapse under the weight of all these goddamn typos.

Okay that's probably not accurate or realistic, but sometimes I wish there were greater consequences for not proofreading something other than an angry white guy (i.e. me) and a blog with 157 page views (i.e. this blog).

I won't bore you with my tales of near-unemployment. That could be another blog altogether. No, Dear Reader (e.g. Kim Jong Un), I know why you came. You want proof you're not the only person who can't seem to write a coherent sentence.

Up first! This article by Oscar Williams Grut.

Sometimes I feel like the minor typos are the worst because they made by people who understand English but who are too lazy to use it properly.



There's two things wrong with this paragraph. For now, I'm going to talk about only one of them. Normally the typos I feature in this blog don't really destroy the meaning of what is being said. They're merely annoyances that probably only bother me. However, occasionally there's gems like this.

"It's not often but you find Snoop Dogg rubbing shoulders with Silicon Valley's elite but..."

Do you see the problem? You can't use but twice in a sentence to talk about the same thing. You may be asking why that is, well it's because "but" is often used to negate or modify whatever was said before it.

What the above sentence is actually saying is more along the lines of:

"While you don't often find Snoop Dogg rubbing shoulders with Silicon Valley's elite it does happen from time to time, however the rapper joined some of the technology scene's best-known venture capitalists in funding viral news site Reddit."

So is the author saying that these venture capitalists aren't some of Silicon Valley's elite? If so why mention that first part? The whole thing is just confusing.

If only The Independent bothered to hire a copy editor then maybe they could have caught that little error and replaced the first "but" with a "that" or even rewrite the first part altogether. Perhaps it would be something more like:

"You might not expect to see Snoop Dogg rubbing shoulders with Silicon Valley's elite but the rapper..."

Boom. Simple as sliced ham.

I said there were two problems with the above and there are. Let's take a look at another snippet from the article.


No the author didn't misspell Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr's name. Instead, what Oscar failed to do was to recognize the fact that Calvin no longer goes by "Snoop Dogg" but has taken on the name "Snoop Lion".

How long did journalists have to write out, "The artist formerly known as Prince"? But they did it. They wrote a phrase in place of a name because that's what he went by. We may be most familiar with calling Calvin "Snoop Dogg" but that's not his name anymore. Get with the times, Oscar.

Anyways, that's all for today, Dear Reader. Hope you enjoyed.

Cheers.

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