Grousing of a Grammar Nazi

[Ed Hurst]

Let's lighten things up a little. Would anyone care to speculate?

I've noticed that some of the most academically oriented sites hosting daily articles are manifesting typographical errors they would previously have not allowed to slip through. It's not just one site nor one particular orientation; it's everywhere. On the one hand, I suppose it's proof the material is written by a human. On the other hand, it seems to indicate a shift in things that I'm not sure I can properly attribute.

What do you think?

[forrealone]

I actually started noticing that a while ago.  I do admit I spend a decent amount  of time reading topics of interest online.  And, there will be typos like a mispelled word that was obviously done in haste (can't imagine wehre typed intentionally for where).  Then there are the typos on TV.  Whether it's the banners or whatever you call them on a newsbroadcast where "chilly weatehr in days ahead" is displayed or an advertisement that actually has a typo in the text part of it.  

I agree this is human error but even a simple spellcheck feature would catch that stuff.  Anyway, my opinion began with "sure aren't any good proofreaders out there anymore" and then I thought.  HA!  They probably don't even have them anymore.  Who would want to be a proofreader when spellcheck and computers do it all.  Wrong!  They obviously don't or aren't or can't.

Good question, Ed!

I too am kinda funny about spelling and grammar (my Mom was very insistent on that from the time I was a little child - especially things like between you and me where a lot of people say between you and I)  Lol

[Ed Hurst]

I too am kinda funny about spelling and grammar (my Mom was very insistent on that from the time I was a little child - especially things like between you and me where a lot of people say between you and I)  Lol

Yeah, I remember the rural school where the teachers struggled to get kids to use the proper "I" or "me" and they consistently got it backwards.

[jaybreak]

I actually just noticed this a few days ago in a mainstream news article I read randomly at work, about a local sports dance team. There weren't any grammar errors but there were "industry" terms that one could maybe figure out with context clues. Human interest stories like these usually explain things that could confuse readers easily, which is why this article stuck out to me.

But more importantly the article used a lot of ambiguous language, or phrased things very strangely, like how "read" could be a present tense or past tense verb, or it could be even a noun ("that book was a good read," etc.). Things like that that a competent writer (not me, I make stupid mistakes all the time) would not make, or even a human editor or a program like Word or Grammarly raise a flag over.

The lack of explanation of dance terms and the confusing phrasing makes me think this could've been AI generated, despite there being a lot of quotes from the dancers in it. So this might be a different thing than what you're bringing up, Ed, but it's probably in the same ballpark.

[Ed Hurst]

Well, it's all part of the same results. Regardless of the cause, readability is declining on the Net.