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Wednesday, 14 August 2002 |
While boning up on how to write comparative book reviews well, I came across Bamboozled at the Revolution by Scott Rosenberg, at Salon. The subtitle is The media titans still don't get it. Absolutely true.
6:22:00 PM 
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I have other things to write, so here is the very last one for today.
So many writers on the web and in magazines now miswrite palette as pallet.
A palette is “A board, typically with a hole for the thumb, which an artist can hold while painting and on which colors are mixed. The range of colors used in a particular painting or by a particular artist: a limited palette. The range of qualities inherent in nongraphic art forms such as music and literature.”
A pallet is “A narrow hard bed or straw-filled mattress. Chiefly Southern U.S. A temporary bed made from bedding arranged on the floor, especially for a child.”
Many graphics programs use the digital equivalent of palettes as user interface elements. They definitely do not use anything remotely resembling pallets.
6:11:49 PM
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Yet another one—they just keep coming!
Mispronouncing template as temp-plet is so common as to be almost unremarkable. Logically speaking, a templet is a tiny temple.
5:46:44 PM
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Here is one more that crops up every day in Oz, especially on the television. The German firm Braun is a major designer and manufacturer of household electrical goods of all kinds. I own a number of their excellent products, and used to own many more.
Braun in German is the same word as brown in English, and the same colour. It is pronounced in exactly the same way.
Yet, Australians mispronounce Braun as brr-orrn. Even the bozos doing the replacement voice-overs in English on the Braun TV commercials say brr-orrn. Why? I guess you can’t expect people who can barely speak their own language to be able to speak anyone else’s!
5:30:05 PM
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Come to think of it, here is another one that is particularly common in American English. “I felt as if I were….”
There is only one of you, and you are a single entity and not a collection of many entities, unless, that is, you have a bad case of multiple personality disorder. So this statement should be “I felt as if I was….”
5:04:16 PM
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Just as bad and even more pervasive is the habit of treating the name of an organisation or other entity as if it was a plurality instead of a singularity. This mistake is now so common that it appears in all the newspapers all the time, as well as in daily speech.
Here is what I mean. Take the RSL. It is an organisation, one single corporate entity, a singularity, and so you say “The RSL is now open….” People who are confused about plurals and singles say “The RSL are now open….”
Following the chop logic behind this stupid habit, when referring to Australia, instead of saying “Australia is an island that is also a continent” then these people should be saying “Australia are an island that is also a continent.”
I wonder how long it will be before I hear, or read, that kind of rotten English?
4:54:52 PM
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Many Australians speak English as if it was their second language, even when it is their only language, and they have some pretty bizarre habits as a result.
One that is popular in the country is to drop off the s at the end of plurals, and replace it with an extra emphasis on the single form of the word itself.
Thus, miles becomes mile. “I drove 500 miles to go shopping yesterday” turns into “I drove 500 mile to go shopping yesterday.”
Since when does pronouncing a word harder and louder make it into a plural? Try adding an s to the end of words, guys. It won’t kill you.
4:43:12 PM
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All of Apple’s high-end PowerMac mini-tower computers are now dual-processor machines. The consumer entry-level eMac range has now gained a SuperDrive model. The LCD iMacs have dropped in price again.
10:28:24 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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