26/09/2007

'Eats', shoots and leaves

A quickie.

One of the reasons the tabloids get away with writing nonsense about people is the potential for misleading with quotation marks. Using quotes usually signals that something is a direct quote, but can also signal that you're using words you wouldn't normally use. So the papers can produce an article about a report that includes all sorts of stuff and dress it up to look like direct quotes from the report, but claim they never intended to do that at all.


The Express front page headline today displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the quotation mark should be used even to mislead. That or utter contempt for anyone who does.



"Now a 'photo' of Madeline in Morocco," it screams, but the quotation marks are in totally the wrong place. What's in question in the statement is whether or not the photo is of Madeline in Morocco - not whether or not it's a photo.

It seems the paper can't get its lying arse 'headlines' right anymore.* What is the world coming to?

*Did you see what I did there?

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