I was reading the local rag today, and noticed the language use was absolutely shocking. They managed to spell "jujitsu" (a kind of Japanese martial arts) as "Jiu jutso", there was multiple commas missing and too many commas in some places and just general spelling mistakes. Another thing I see so often in newspapers is people mixing up "there" and "their" and "they're". I mean, I can understand if someone uneducated mixes them up, but for something being published and circulated, you'd think there would be some form of proofreading done to prevent mistakes like this. It doesn't make them look very good.
Do you notice this in your area or country? Like on the news or w/e when they spell things wrong or use horrible language that makes you shudder?
Does anyone know to what extent things are actually checked over? I bitched to my Nana about it and she said she's noticed in the last few years, our national paper - the "New Zealand Herald" - has been getting just as bad. Opinions?
What in God's name is going on in NZ? American newspapers are known for having editors that are really hardcore grammar nazis, to the point of being ridiculous (they commonly use spellings that have fallen out of use in the general public, and in all other printed material.) If I caught ANY kind of spelling or grammatical error in even a local newspaper (or, GOD FORBID, the New York Times) I would be beside myself. That kind of unprofessionalism really pisses me off, it's really not terribly difficult to have someone check these things.
I've had a couple pieces published in local newspapers, and they were very very thorough with their grammatical and spelling editing (I'm bad about mixing British spellings in with my American spellings sometimes). I enjoy proofreading my school newspaper, we used to be terrible though, hehe.
