Subbing Clinic

The Times, January 1, 2017

Can you believe this? There is someone at the Times who thinks that ‘destroyed’ and ‘damaged’ mean the same thing.

i newspaper, January 1, 2018

This I would like to see. Will they be asked to do siren noises?

Sun on Sunday, December 31, 2017

This is sheer ignorance. ‘Her’ is either a possessive, as in ‘Margaret wrote to her friend’, or an object, as in ‘I saw her in the distance’. The pronoun needed here is ‘she’, used for someone already mentioned. Assuming that one person handled the story and one person read a proof, there are at least two people working on a national Sunday paper who do not know this most basic piece of grammar.

Sunday Times, December 31, 2017

Honestly, anyone who thinks this is an acceptable heading is in the wrong job. It’s not clever, it’s silly and juvenile.

If you want a smart heading, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this:

Cattle do nicely

I would go for something sweeter, such as

For the love of cows

 

i newspaper, December 30, 2017

Is there a brain present? What an extraordinary way to express a simple bit of information.

Among the 12 victims were children aged one, two and seven.

This is 11 words compared with 23.

i newspaper, December 30, 2017

(This wouldn’t quite fit in my scanner, but you get the idea).

I cannot understand what kind of disturbed mind would choose to list the interviewees in any order but left to right, which has been the standard  way since the dawn of time, and is what readers expect. There is no logic to this.

The Times, December 30, 2017

This is a common error. To infer is to deduce from the evidence, as in ‘he inferred from the state of the body that the victim had been dead for weeks’. The word wanted here is ‘imply’, which means to hint or suggest.

The Times, December 28, 2017

There is a school of thought that any story can be told in 25 words. Here is the proof that this is not true. It is better not to use a story than to serve up a pointless version like this.

i newspaper, December 27, 2017

You really do not need to introduce Tesco as a ‘supermarket giant’. Anyone who does not know what it is will not be reading a newspaper.

i newspaper, December 27, 2017

(100 words) Here is an interesting story with not much space to tell it in. However the person who handled it has seen fit to repeat ‘remote island’, ‘off the west coast of’, ‘wildlife’, ‘rangers’ and ‘birds’. That doesn’t leave much room for facts. Oh, and it’s not remote: as far as I can see it is about half a mile from the mainland.

This is how I would do it:

A couple have landed their dream job looking after 100,000 birds on a Scottish island.

Craig Nisbet, 38, and Francesca Clair, 35, will live on Handa, off the west coast of Sutherland, from March to September, sharing a £14,500 salary.

Handa is home to one of Europe’s biggest colonies of guillemots, as well as red grouse, puffin, Arctic skua, Arctic tern and eider duck, and is visited by around 7,000 tourists a year.

The couple, both experienced wildlife rangers, will have free accommodation in a bothy. They will be joined by four long-term and 50 weekly volunteers over the season. (100 words)