#413

i newspaper, May 31, 2018

This is rubbish. A musical note is a particular pitch, and it is the same whether it is played on a piano, a piccolo or sung.  There is no such thing as a ‘piano note’. The interval between notes, to signify higher or lower pitch, is measured in ‘semitones’.  Looking at the original research, the women’s voices were lowered by 1.3 semitones, which is a bit more than the interval between two notes (is this research significant enough to report?) Anyway, the point is that the person who handled this obviously had not the slightest idea what he or she was talking about and should have sought advice.

I would have left out the ‘more than one piano note’ from the intro, as well as ‘after pregnancy’ – being a new mother by definition comes after pregnancy. Using the word ‘claimed’ makes it sound as if you are not sure you believe them.

So:

The voices of new mothers become deeper and more monotonous, say scientists.

They speculate that the change might be an attempt to sound more authoritative, or it could be driven by hormones.

The heading could be

Baby’s arrival makes a mother’s voice deeper

 

#412

The Times, May 30, 2018

Here is a classic case of not thinking about the story. What do we want to know? Whether she achieved it or not! Are we supposed to think the photographer didn’t bother to wait to see if she did it or if she plunged to her death? Assuming she survived, all you need to do is change ‘attempts’ to ‘during’.

#411

The Times, May 22, 2018

There must be legions of P G Wodehouse fans amongst Times readers, and every one of them will have been horrified to see Jeeves described as a ‘butler’. He was a valet (as it correctly says in the second leg) or a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’. This error renders invalid the whole premise of the story and its accompanying picture of Fry and Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster. It is a common mistake but Times readers would expect better.

PS: What did I tell you?

The Times, May 23, 2018

#410

i newspaper, May 21, 2018

It would be reasonable to put ‘people’ if there were the faintest possibility that readers might think you were talking about the mental health of giraffes or fleas, but not when it is obvious that you are referring to human beings. Delete it.

#409

i newspaper, May 21, 2018

As I remarked a few days ago (#407) it is clumsy to mix present tense with an event in the past, and it is not necessary. There is no law that captions must be in present tense, and this would read better simply by changing ‘provides’ to ‘provided’.

In 33 words you should avoid repetition, in this case ‘expected’. You could replace the first one with ‘forecast’.

#408

i newspaper, May 18, 2018

I can’t believe anyone over the age of eight, let alone someone who is presumably being paid to work on a newspaper, does not know what ‘extinct’ means. This is like saying someone is recovering from death. Cretinous.

#407

i newspaper, May 16, 2018

(54 words) ‘People’ must be one of the most used words in the media, yet unless told otherwise you can assume any story is about human beings, not giraffes or cockroaches. It is much better to come up with a more focused word, in this case ‘walkers’, perhaps, or ‘ramblers’. If you are talking about a number of people, you can often do without the word altogether, for example ‘The hurricane, which killed 200 in Haiti, made landfall in the US at Miami’.

I don’t like captions which mix the present tense (‘walk’) with the past (‘yesterday’). Often you can get round that by using the continuous ‘walking’, which here would be ‘People walking up the Seven Sisters cliffs yesterday . . . ‘

The south coast is long. How about saying ‘East Sussex’?

Temperatures did not reach the mid-twenties ‘across the country’. Here in Lancashire the maximum was 18 or 19. (It is a constant irritation that newspapers talk about heatwaves and cold spells according to the weather outside their London offices. There is a lot more of the country.)

‘Things’ and ‘set to’ are both awful.

Here is a better way of doing it, which avoids repeating ‘temperature’:

Temperatures reaching the mid-twenties drew walkers to the Seven Sisters chalk cliffs in East Sussex yesterday. It was expected to be less warm today, but the forecast is for a steady climb from the weekend ahead of a glorious bank holiday at the end of the month. (47 words)

 

 

#406

Daily Express, May 11, 2018

If you are going to use a stock phrase (which is one step down from a cliche), at least get it right. You can ‘call time’ or you can ‘blow the final whistle’. I’m afraid that ‘blowing time’ has unfortunate connotations which are unsuitable for a family website.

#405

The Times, May 12, 2018

This caption says: The Duke of Edinburgh, 96, was seen in public with the Queen for the first time since his hip operation last month at the 75th Royal Windsor Horse Show (29 words)

It reads as if the duke had his operation at the horse show. You could get round this by doing it thus:

In his first public appearance since his hip operation last month, the Duke of Edinburgh, 96, visited the 75th Royal Windsor Horse show with the Queen yesterday (27 words)

which gets in ‘yesterday’.

The same problem often occurs with court reports, for example: ‘Smith was jailed for five years at Blackfriars Crown Court.’ Just turn it round: ‘At Blackfriars Crown Court, Smith was jailed for five years.’

 

 

#404

Daily Express, May 7, 2018

‘Bonanza’ means a large amount of something good, for example ‘a bonanza year for kale growers’. It cannot possibly apply to a lot of blisters, except perhaps for the sticking plaster industry.

Daily Express, May 7, 2018

If you have joint third in a ranking list, those two count as third and fourth places, so the next one is fifth.