USA Today: "England and Wales looses all prisoner information"

[Towlie]

What a dummy I am, eh? I don't know the difference between "loose" and "lose".

Well, guess what. That was a copy & paste!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-08-21-UK-prisoners_N.htm

Check it out before they correct it.

[Left Is Write]

1. Not only is it the wrong word, it doesn't even agree with the subject!

"Loose" instead of "lose" = bad

Singular verb form with plural subject = just as bad

[Oeditpus Rex]

2. Regarding the comments about proofreaders and editors:

Newspapers don't use actual editors for their web versions and they haven't used proofreaders at all for many years. Web stuff (except maybe for reporters' blogs) is done by graphics people, not journalists, and many newspapers have farmed out their web operations.

[MorningGlow]

3. I beg your pardon

I was a content editor and subsequently the manager of a Web site for a local TV news station. I have a BA in English, creative writing concentration, and a master's degree in teaching. :P

On edit: If one of my employees had put up this headline, I would have been logged on even at midnight to change it. And I would have slapped that employee around something fierce.

[Oeditpus Rex]

7. I beg *your* pardon

I was speaking of newspapers.

[MorningGlow]

8. 'S all right

I give special consideration for Python fanatics. :evilgrin:

News Web sites are pretty much all cut from the same cloth; in fact, our newspaper counterparts had a better chance of being edited by real writers/editors. (In the TV news biz, the station manager kept trying to wrest control of the Web site away from us to give it to his producers, who couldn't spell their own names without checking their ID badges.)

However, you are correct in that they don't get the same attention as the primary news source, although that's been changing in the past few years as the dinosaurs in the media have started to tweak (belatedly of course) to the fact that the Web is a viable news outlet.

[edbermac]

4. What do you expect from people who drive on the wrong side of the road?

:7

[skooooo]

5. Spelling does count...

..especially when it changes the meaning of what you're trying to say. Wish some people on DU would understand that.

[Zuiderelle]

6. I was wondering who they loosed it on!