In case you missed my little musings, I had cataract surgeries on both eyes (July 1 and then July 8) and had lots of trouble finding a good focus range for a computer screen. I'm still experimenting, but things are much better now in terms of sitting at the monitor. I had no pain at all, BTW, and now have "perfect" distance vision, which I have not experienced since high school.
Just a quick post to get me back in the groove today, and this concerns a headline I saw in the Denver Post nearly two weeks ago that I now can't put my hands on. But it basically stated that there was a problem with "participles" causing pollution and health issues around a small lake in Colorado. I nearly spit out my coffee when I read "participles," and when it was quite clear that the headline writers wanted "particles."
Many readers might have just shrugged and gone with it, and others might have done the quick mental editing to correct the word choice. My reaction was to silently bemoan the lack of copyeditors these days, as newspapers seek to cut costs to the bone, as well as to remind me that just because a word is in a larger point size (like headline size) that doesn't mean mistakes won't be made.
In short, a participle is formed by turning a verb into an adjective or noun. So we can have "burned" toast or "working" families.
Every time I see an egregious headline error, I imagine professional journalism taking yet another blow to its credibility.
For student writers, these errors can immediately start an instructor questioning the overall ideas of the piece of writing.
So, my advice is simple: take an extra 30 seconds and reread your titles (not to mention first paragraphs). Remember that the burden of being accurate is on US, as writers, not on the readers.
No comments:
Post a Comment