Being a student of journalist, we were taught to proofread print work early on in our lives. I remember how Prof. Rolly Fernandez would stress the importance of ensuring that an article should be flawless before it even sees print. That's why he would ask us to check every word and every punctuation mark before our article sees print.
When I started working as a copywriter, we were asked to proofread all our print ads, too. At this time, there was more pressure on us. After all, if you make a proofreading mistake in school, that's just a minus point. If you make a proofreading mistake in real life, you'll have to pay for the ad placement. (Or at least that was what they threatened us with.)
That's why I can't help but feel disturbed whenever I see typographical and factual errors in articles - whether they're printed or on-line. And as I was reading my daily dose of style news today, there wasn't one error. There were two!
First is this commonly committed error which baffles me no end.
It escapes my how people mistake "peek" for "peak." And I've seen this mistake so many times before, even from my students and colleagues. Come on people, you "peek" into something and you go up a "peak." There's a difference!
Second, is this article from an on-line news paper about Narciso Rodriguez.
Last time I checked, Narciso Rodriguez created the wedding dress of Carolyn Bessette, not Caroline Bisset. I mean, is she Jacqueline Bisset's daughter? Well, she isn't! This error is particularly appalling because it's so easy to fact check a name. But I guess someone wasn't doing his or her job.
As one of our thesis groups reported last year, the peril of on-line journalism is the fact that they're always in a hurry to get things published on-line that they skip the proofreading and fact checking part. And judging by these two articles, it's a common practice, anywhere in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment