Saturday, April 05, 2008

Sic!

From worldwidewords

Sic!
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"Don't most people know this already?" was Tom Gould's comment on a
front-page teaser headline advertising an article inside (what's
the newspaper term for these?) that appeared in The Tennessean on
26 March: "Don't expect smart car dealer soon."

What a difference a misplaced hyphen makes. Annie Clarke reports
that the London freesheet Metro included a headline on 27 March:
ANTI-YOUTH CRIME EVENT.

"The instructions on a carpet cleaner," e-mailed Pete Swindells,
"caused me momentary confusion: 'Empty when full'."

Department of athletic horticulture. Henry Drury was reading the
Home & Living section of the Sunday Telegraph for 30th March and
found this property advert: "Paradise Cottage, West Berkshire, a
glorious Grade II listed four bedroom hotchpotch of a cottage.
Gardens and a stream run through the property."

Bankers struggle against their reputation for unfeeling arrogance
but error messages like the one that Roger Jones encountered on the
Barclays Bank Web site don't help: "We suggest you try to log in
later and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause."

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