The Guardian’s Media Monkey blog got its hands on an all-staff email sent by Daily Telegraph associate editor Simon Heffer. He berates the staff for making too many mistakes, and for not adhering to the paper’s style guide. An excerpt:
Dear Colleagues
I have exhorted you all to read carefully what you write. I think some of you are now doing this, but not always thinking about what it is that you read. This can be the only explanation for this week’s worst horror (and, sadly, there is some competition). We ran a story in Tuesday’s paper about a farmer’s wife who died of a heart attack after a thief stole diesel from her farm. This unfortunate lady was called Mrs Dove. Her son is called Michael Dove. In the story he became Michael Gove; who happens to be the Conservative spokesman on schools. You might think this could hardly get worse. I fear it could, and did. Michael Gove not only became the unfortunate woman’s son. He also became a victim in his own right. The thief “admitted to [sic] the theft of diesel, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Michael Gove and stealing the Mitsubishi pickup‚” Later, this gem of a piece included the phrase “After his was arrest”. I shall not bother to try to compute the number of people who should have read this story before it appeared on the nation’s breakfast tables on Tuesday morning. You get my drift.
There have been so many literals this week that I suspect some of you either never could spell, or have given up trying. Perhaps my favourite was “hocky mom”, followed by “plumb compote” (bring on the lead poisoning). One reader, having spotted the words “Chrsitmas” and “adminsitration” in the same story wondered whether our newsroom was now being run by “mnokeys”. While it is good to provide the customers with amusement, it should be intentional …
If we are setting tests or quizzes for our readers, do try to ensure the right answers really are right. A test for would-be immigrants managed to get the voltage figure for this country wrong. It also said that one had to be 16 to enter the lottery which, as several readers pointed out, appeared to be hard on those aged 17 or more. The answer “16 or over” would have been better. I must stress again that it is of enormous importance to get styles and titles correct, even when they belong to fictional characters. An article on the new film Australia this week referred to the heroine as being first Lady Sarah Ashley and then Lady Ashley. She cannot be both. In the film she is the daughter of an earl, and therefore the first style is correct …
