The Times, December 28, 2023

Unless you are told otherwise, you can assume that stories are about human beings, or ‘people’. You do not need to keep reminding your readers. In this story the first ‘people’ is fine as we don’t know whether the injured were male or female.  The second is unnecessary: ‘a crowd’ is obviously composed of people.  The third and fourth are part of a section which is more or less a repeat of the intro.

The use of the tense ‘has died’ is odd as it suggests that the man died later, when the story says he was dead at the scene. There is no clue as to what day the incident happened (it should say ‘yesterday’). And as usual the writer believes that ‘after’ and ‘when’ are synonyms. As it reads, the car hit the crowd and at some later time (‘after’) they were injured.

The main fault with the intro and the heading is that they leave out the murder aspect. There are many fatal road accidents, not so many when the action is considered to be deliberate. If I had been subbing this I would have done this heading and intro (note correct use of ‘when’ and ‘after’, and information about when it happened):

Murder arrest after man
dies when car hits crowd

A MAN was arrested on suspicion of murder after a car ploughed into a crowd, killing a man and injuring seven other people, in Sheffield yesterday afternoon.

 

 

The Times, unknown date 2023

I saved this but my scanner wasn’t working. Anyway this is an example of how not to mix imperial and metric measures. I would use imperial with metric in brackets, others would prefer it the other way round, but you really must be consistent.

 

Mail Online, June 23, 2023

I would not have believed even the cretins at Mail Online could get ‘submersible’ so wrong. What’s a stronger word than ‘despair’? (I will ignore the fact that the close quote should be before the full point.)

Withybush: Child hurt after car hits pedestrians at hospital

BBC  News online, June 21, 2023

There seems to be a firm conviction these days that ‘after’ means the same as ‘when’, but ‘after’ means it happened later. This heading implies that the car hit the pedestrians and that subsequently someone came along and hurt the child.

Times, June 13, 2023

A sweet innocent wrote this heading (on an article by a man) but there should be an adult on the Times who would have realised this would cause snorting at breakfast tables all over the country. Subs have got to have dirty minds.

A young farmer had a ewe-ge surprise when her sheep gave birth to six healthy lambs in a “very rare” event.

BBC News Online, March 18, 2023

I cannot believe that the BBC, allegedly staffed by adults, thought that this effort was acceptable. Pathetic doesn’t begin to describe it.

Dozens killed after two trains collide in Greece

BBC News online, March 1, 2023

Is there anyone left who understands the difference between ‘when’ (ie at the same time) and ‘after’ (ie later)? This heading means that two trains collided and dozens were killed at some later time. It’s nonsense.

i newspaper, February 27, 2023

This is a classic example of the lack of curiosity I am always moaning about. How can you possibly send this through without saying how many wins he already has? You might as well not use the story. For the record he has 723 wins so needs another 77. Incidentally it looks to me as it this is an agency story as the identical wording appears in the Mail. The ‘i’ sub has cut it  above the paragraph about the number of wins he already has.  This is lazy and incompetent.

“I find all Mr Kirwan did outside the supermarket, when the defendants were by the trollies, was to admonish them for their trouble-making and anti-social behaviour in the lavatories.” Mr Justice Fraser said.

BBC News online, February 16, 2023

This is a common error –  the plural of words ending in ‘ey’ is ‘eys’, not ‘ies’. Thus trolleys, flunkeys, lackeys, donkeys etc. Also storeys for a building in Britain, but in the US it is spelled ‘story’ so there the plural would be ‘stories’.

Note the careless punctuation error in the BBC piece, a full point at the end of the quote instead of a comma. Sigh.

 

The Times, January 15, 2023

This is by Martin Samuel, a highly paid sports writer who in this autobiographical piece repeatedly refers to his ‘bent’ for English. One would therefore think he would know how to spell the name of Philip Larkin, possibly the best known British poet of the 20th century. If he doesn’t, the sub certainly should. This is ignorance of a high level.

Actually, if you a connoisseur of journalists who think they can write, this is a good example of the genre. Pure gibberish. You can see it here.