Blog fever

[LoisWakeman]

I promised myself that I wouldn't take on yet another time-consuming thing, but I finally succumbed to the urge to start my own blog. I post a reference to it here as it's mostly about English and its misuse.

Not much there yet, but I hope to take to task many more sloppy writers and speakers in the future!

http://i4info.blog.co.uk/

[ktinkel]

I promised myself that I wouldn't take on yet another time-consuming thing, but I finally succumbed to the urge to start my own blog. I post a reference to it here as it's mostly about English and its misuse.Oh, excellent! Very nice reading.

[Michael Rowley]

Lois:

The Guardian was always known for the carelessness of its sub-editing in the days of hot metal typesetting (hence its nickname, Grauniad)

You should know better than that: The Guardian (I'll stay conventional, and use italic for a newspaper title) got its name of 'Grauniad' from the time when it was still being edited in Manchester but printed 'down the line' in London, which was then (pre-1967) technically difficult. Before that, the Manchester Guardian was edited and printed in Manchester, which had the disadvantage that its southern readers (of which I was one) didn't get their morning paper until the evening.

[LoisWakeman]

I stand corrected. Whatever the reason, it was renowned for typos: and they still have a corrections and clarifications section to this day. (Even if transmission introduced random errors, someone should have proofed them in London, surely?)

[Richard Waller]

You might like to put your blog URL on your sigline here. As indeed I do.

[Michael Rowley]

Lois:

Even if transmission introduced random errors, someone should have proofed them in London, surely?

They were corrected eventually, but not sufficiently well for the early London editions. The established London papers were naturally annoyed that a provincial newcomer was trespassing on their territory, and I'm not surprised that when some wag thought up 'Grauniad', they spread the name enthusiastically; London, of course was the only place that counted, and papers such as The Times and the Daily Telegraph could ignore any misprints in their own first editions, which were sent to the north (and Devon?).

[LoisWakeman]

I did some more reading on this - and of course none of the sources I found came with any attribution, so may well be wrong.

It is alleged that once (only), the masthead was printed as "The Gaurdian", and that Private Eye invented the nickname some time after that.

And as you implied (but did not infer!) in the above post, only early editions were sent by train to London - before anyone had time to proof properly, so presumably Manchester readers had a better read on the whole!

My parents took the News Chronicle during my childhood, so I have no very early memories of The Guardian, though it was the paper they chose when the Chronicle disappeared (rather ironically, I think it was subsumed by the Daily Mail, a polar opposite to The Guardian today.).

[donmcc]

> It is alleged that once (only), the masthead was printed as "The Gaurdian", and that Private Eye invented the nickname some time after that.

I assume you mean the nameplate, not the masthead. And if that is the case, then the error would not be accidental. The nameplate would be standing type, and someone would have had to switch the letter out (I assume this as a hand type prank). Of course, since it was standing type, no one would look closely at it during the production process.

[Andrew B.]

Well done! I put your blog on my routine reading list.

[Michael Rowley]

Don:

then the error would not be accidental. The nameplate would be standing type

The type used for The Guardian has been changed more than once, and it is remotely possible that when a change was first made, an edition might have gone out with The Gaurdian, though it seems unlikely. Much more likely is that Private Eye delibately used The Grauniad, as that was one of the characteristics of PE's style of humour.

[LoisWakeman]

So you do - but I am not sure I add to mine often enough for trumpet it yet! Today's is about blogs and (Joe or Fred) Bloggs.

[LoisWakeman]

Well, like I said to Dick, it isn't updated more than 2 or 3 times a week, so I hope you have more interesting things to keep you occupied in the mean time! ;)

[Cristen Gillespie]

I promised myself that I wouldn't take on yet another time-consuming thing, but I finally succumbed to the urge to start my own blog. I post a reference to it here as it's mostly about English and its misuse.


I'm glad you did succumb. I have stumbled upon many a dull blog -- so many, in fact, I'd given up on the concept. First a friend tells me about Miss Snark and now your blog refreshes the palette. I guess there's something to blogs. Some of them, anyway. :-)

[Richard Waller]

What is the justification for my blog? Well, everyone is entitled to my opinion!

[Andrew B.]

No problem for me. These days I make the rounds every two to four weeks. So I guess "routine" is no longer the word for my list.

[iamback]

http://i4info.blog.co.uk/

Nice! I'll surely poke around there every now and then.

I'll admit though I was confused by the usage of the tag "euphemism" on your post "FU?": I always thought a euphemism was a word chosen to make a bad thing sound better, not the other way round. ;)

[LoisWakeman]

You are right about euphemism: I was thinking of 'funding unit' instead of 'student' - making a nasty squishy human sound nice and manageable to a bureaucrat <G>