The dying Stuff news media outfit, bought for $1 a couple of years back, continues to entertain with its illiteracy.
A recent heading referred to a “dead” body found in the Manawatu Estuary. That’s like telling readers the sun is hot, “bodies” tending to be dead.
It then advised that the body is likely to be that of a fisherman “that” went missing. “Who” went fishing, not “that” you buffoons.
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The one I like is the retail shop…
Sadly, Stuff isn’t alone in this growing illiteracy in our print media.
Young reporters, newsreaders, & talkshow hosts using “that” instead of “who”, when referring to one or more people, is sadly now so common there’s probably (often now ‘probly’) a whole generation of kids growing up not knowing any better.
(Another thing that sometimes drives me to distraction is the increasing Kiwi use of the American ‘double-is’ in Kiwi broadcast media. “The thing is, is that…”, The point is, is that…”.)
When we were children my mum used to gently correct our incorrect English – & we were grateful for that – because we didn’t advertise ourselves as ill-educated & ignorant thereafter.
I’ve given up very carefully & politely trying to correct younger folk on grammar, spelling etc Many don’t know the difference between “their”, “there” & “they’re” when writing or posting comments online. Many have no idea there’s a difference between “loose” & “lose”. They just use”loose”.
These young English-manglers often go apeshit at one when corrected. “What does it effing matter? As long as people know what I mean, it’s not a problem!”
I blame the Education Department, or whoever trains English teachers these days. Does Ed Dept still have inspectors go to schools & observe new teachers?
They don’t know the difference between “fewer” and “less” either.
While evidence suggests that comparatively few New Zealanders whose native is English speak any other languages, the importance of being more language-savvy has become increasingly prominent.
The above is a from a recent article in the Northern Advocate. Spot the deliberate mistake.