A doozy of a sub-edit FAIL from The Age.

Oh dear.

news.com.au sayd so

Great article at SMH:

Singular third person: how Matthew Hayden became a perfect PRAT

Sacha Molitorisz
January 31, 2009

For a short while now, something has been missing. Life has lacked some vital ingredient. Fortunately, I’ve identified what it is.

It’s Matthew Hayden referring to Matthew Hayden as Matthew Hayden.

Since the Queenslander retired from cricket earlier this month, a vacuum has appeared in Australian sport. Suddenly no elite Aussie sportsperson remains who consistently refers to themselves in the third person.

“People still remember how the young Hayden would poke grimly round his front pad,” Hayden once said of himself, seemingly living his whole life as an out-of-body experience. “Matthew Hayden was created in India in 2001,” he said more recently, meaning Matthew Hayden turns eight some time this year.

To be fair, Hayden isn’t alone. Indeed, the cricket world is full of People Referring Autobiographically in the Third Person, or PRATPs. (As an acronym, it’s a mouthful. Let’s lose the second “P”.)

The ex-Aussie captain Mark Taylor was a renowned PRAT. “Mark Taylor was one of our best batsmen last summer,” Taylor famously said. “If this season is Mark Taylor’s turn to miss out, so be it.” Presumably he was so detached from himself that he wouldn’t have minded one way or the other.

“Michael Clarke will be fine,” said Michael Clarke, shortly after he was dropped from the Test team.

On another occasion, he said: “I’ll always be Michael Clarke and I hope that I can be successful being me.”

Such versatility: third person and first person in the same sentence!Cricket’s PRATs aren’t just Aussies. “The best thing [for England] is to get Michael Vaughan fit and playing well,” said ex-captain Michael Vaughan, showing that he is equally adept with immodesty and willow.

“Sreesanth’s way is to be aggressive,” said the Indian bowler. “Sreesanth will always remain Sreesanth.”

Very Zen. The sound of one hand clapping itself, you might say.

It makes you wonder. Perhaps Hayden et al have been making some sort of philosophical statement. Perhaps in their peculiar grammar they are eschewing egocentrism and solipsism, promoting instead a profound, noble egalitarianism.

By using the third person, perhaps they are saying that, sure, they may be highly-paid and indulged, but on an intrinsic level they’re just like everyone else.

Or maybe they are revealing something even deeper. Maybe their manner of speaking is a subtle indicator that they ascribe to the Buddhist precept of anatta, which holds that there is no such thing as permanent self.

Or maybe they’re all tools and tosspots. That’s what Mike Atherton thinks.

“When cricketers refer to themselves in the third person, my antennae twitch,” says the ex-England captain.

“It suggests a certain self-regard – talking about themselves almost as if they were describing a person they admire from a distance.”

At this point, I must admit that my daughter used to refer to herself in the third person. She grew out of the habit a year ago, when she was two. So perhaps it isn’t just a sign of arrogance. Maybe it’s also a sign of immaturity.

Apart from cricket and the creche, the trait can be found in rugby league. “The Benji I know plays with confidence,” Benji Marshall said last year.

Taking it all further, his fellow leaguie Greg Inglis refers to himself with only initials. “People say that when big stages come, G.I. comes out, G.I. comes out to play,” he said.

Predictably, boxing is full of it. “I hate that Jeff Fenech,” said the Marrickville Mauler last year, referring to the Marrickville Mauler of yesteryear. “I love what he represented … But I don’t like him.”

Even basketballers dabble.

“This is a such great day in the life of Andrew Bogut, the family of Andrew Bogut,” said Andrew Bogut.

By contrast, the British cyclist Chris Hoy is an island of sanity. “In the past 24 hours everyone has been offering an opinion on Chris Hoy,” remarked a journalist after Hoy won gold at the Beijing Olympics. “But what does Chris Hoy think of Chris Hoy?”

To which the cyclist responded: “Chris Hoy thinks that the day Chris Hoy refers to Chris Hoy in the third person is the day that Chris Hoy disappears up his own arse.”

So, what are we to do? Inspired by Hoy, should we take steps to eradicate PRATs?

In many sports, digital technology is being harnessed to allow decisions to be more closely scrutinised. Video refs and third umpires pore over replays to make determinations – but are third umpires enough? Perhaps it’s time for third person umpires.

That would be one approach. It would, however, be the wrong approach. Because it’s time for us Aussie sports fans to admit how much we love to laugh at the linguistic oddities of sportspeak.

It’s time to ‘fess up to our love of garbled grammar and strangled syntax – which is not just funny, but far preferable to all the bland PR-isms that are becoming increasingly common. In particular, it’s time to acknowledge how much we loved to hear Matthew Hayden talking up Matthew Hayden.

Sure, these competitors with a penchant for the third person may be arrogant, immature and unhinged, but since when have we wanted sports stars who are sane?

There’s something more. My guess is that in the final months of his long, celebrated career, Hayden began referring to himself in the third person less often.

I would suggest that when Haydos became sane, his batting suffered. More research is required, but I’m convinced that PRATs are better at sport.

It is here that our sports development programs are failing us. It’s all very well for coaches and trainers to focus on talent, technique and mental fortitude, but where is the emphasis on grammar? On the turns of phrase that precipitate sporting glory?

We don’t just need an Australian Institute of Sport. We need an Australian Institute of Pronouns for Sporting Greatness.

Only then can there be hope of finding a promising youngster in the mould of Matthew Hayden, a gifted upstart equally adept at winning matches and mangling interviews.

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/30/1232818724420.html

This amusing email recently hit the deckchair guru’s inbox:

In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.

Millions of Americans who watched Mr. Obama’s appearance on CBS’ “Sixty Minutes” on Sunday witnessed the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama’s decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

According to presidential historian Davis Logsdon of the University of Minnesota , some Americans might find it “alienating” to have a President who speaks English as if it were his first language.

“Every time Obama opens his mouth, his subjects and verbs are in agreement,” says Mr. Logsdon. “If he keeps it up, he is running the risk of sounding like an elitist.”

The historian said that if Mr. Obama insists on using complete sentences in his speeches, the public may find itself saying, “Okay, subject, predicate, subject predicate – we get it, stop showing off.”

The President-elect’s stubborn insistence on using complete sentences has already attracted a rebuke from one of his harshest critics, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska .

“Talking with complete sentences there and also too talking in a way that ordinary Americans like Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder can’t really do there, I think needing to do that isn’t tapping into what Americans are needing also,” she said.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Another one for the Sub-editing Hall of Shame:

In most newspapers I read, I find a typo or grammatical error, so I’ve decided to name and shame those I find online, beginning with this one from News.com.au:

‘Digruntled’: Fake website email, fake word.

Watched a Lateline interview of Paul Keating (view online here) and enjoyed it, but I’m not going in to all of the politics. What did stick out to me was just how often he uses his hands to cross things off a conversational checklist. He also summarised his arguments by referring to a number of main ‘points’, either three, four or even one (“I’ll make one point, Tony, that is this: …). Right throughout the interview he was checking things off and giving us a visual demonstration of it.

Another older guy I know, who’s also retired but still hangs around his industry, keeping abreast of what’s going on and chucking his thoughts in, does the exact same thing. It got me thinking, are these simply two guys who have a communicative characteristic in common, or is the Hand Checklist something people pick up as they get older?

Have they experienced a lifetime of trying to get their point across and discovered the best way to do it?

A lot of communication gurus will tell you that when laying down an argument, a good structure is this:

Introduce the topic and tell people what you’re going to talk about
On the topic of X, I believe Y and am going to prove this to you by discussing Y1, Y2 and Y3.

Talk about it
Explain Y1
Explain Y2
Explain Y3

Tell them what you’ve told them
Remind them that on the subject of X, Y is true and Y1, Y2 and Y3 make it indisputable.

The above is pretty much common sense and when people explain it to you, you realise it is effective and that you’ve probably been using all or part of it in your own communications anyway.

Is the addition of the hand gestures to help remind people that you’re working your way through a structured argument and that you’re not meandering, and therefore holding their attention better?

Alternatively, is it that ticking things off a checklist helps the communicator stay on message? Could it be that older people need help avoiding verbally wandering off on irrelevant tangents? If that’s the case, Keating and the guy I know would be cases in point, as both can dribble with the best of them; Keating’s obviously getting more this way in his seventh decade.

Anyway, the main point I want to make is (“Tony, the main point is this:”) that whether it is to help the audience stay focussed or the communicator stay on message, the hand gesture can be overdone, and you end up with your audience blogging on it instead of listening to what you were actually saying (or trying to say).

Erica Baxter is marrying a corpse, according to The Age online:

Six feet under and still messing with his son’s wife life; quite an achievement there from Packer Snr.

Update 21:24:
This has now been corrected, probably by a belatedly-eager subbie, but I like to think my naming and shaming may have been the cause.

I have long lamented the decline of ‘grammatics’ (oh, the irony) and the wider ambivalence toward the use of the English language in today’s society, especially amongst our “yoof”. Of particular personal irritation is the increasing prevalence of “sms-speak” as written language.

I abhor this – a guy I know is the editor of a prominent industry publication and whilst his published material is great, his emails are written in this ‘text’ language and it shits me no end. I can understand the argument of it being a less onerous form of communicating, I really can, but I think when your everyday writing is of a sub-standard nature, it won’t be too long before your other writing begins to suffer.

Don’t get me wrong, I respect and even enjoy the evolution of language and communication, but I think lines need to be drawn and this is where I would draw a line if I was able.
Moving on from that rant, I came across this today and enjoyed the discussion it provoked:

Grammar can be fun, academics insist

If only learning grammar wasn’t so dull. It comes with a dour technical language and visions of students plodding through sentences, tagging this word and that phrase.

“A lot of grammar teaching is as boring as bat shit,” says Monash University lecturer Baden Eunson frankly. “That’s why it got ditched in Australia about 30 years ago.”

He would like to see a return to the assessment of English language on exam papers and a beefing-up of VCE English’s language component.

Currently English is taught using “The Books I Like to Teach” approach, he says. “The osmosis theory is that if you study enough books, you’ll learn how to write – and that works to a certain extent.”

However, grammar can be taught in an enjoyable way. “If you talk to students about misplaced prepositional phrases, their eyes glaze over,” says Mr Eunson. “But if you show them the humorous side of poor construction, they laugh, and you say: ‘OK, you don’t want people to laugh at you. Now, let’s talk about how it all works’.”

He suggests using real-life examples, including his old favourite – “A man was fined today for speeding in court.” Was he really fined for sprinting in a courtroom?

Or this newspaper gem: “Prince Andrew finally broached the subject of leaving his wife with the Queen in January.” Was he dropping off his wife for a visit – or for life?

“If you present problems like these to students, they love it, particularly boys, because it’s a problem-solving approach,” says Mr Eunson.

According to Victoria University’s Mary Weaven, learning grammar “doesn’t need to be frightening or even difficult”. Nowadays it’s also very easy to access information about it, including via the internet.

Last year she taught Approaches to Writing, which included a component on grammar, to bachelor of education students. They were aged from about early 20s to late 40s, and their knowledge of grammar ranged from rusty to very good, but all were keen to brush up on their skills.

Over the semester, each student researched a part of speech – transitive/intransitive verbs, colons, conjunctions, apostrophes, direct/indirect speech – then “taught” it to the class.

It led to lively discussions about how these should be used and the most appropriate ages to teach them to children. (Dr Weaven even “threw in the gerund for fun”).

“I believe you may be a better teacher of reading and writing if you have some knowledge of grammar, but ‘drilling’ it didn’t work,” she says. “Also, being literate is more than being able to use a colon in the right place . . . and teaching English is about more than the mechanics. It also involves an understanding of literature.”

In 2005, a study by Professor Richard Andrews from the University of York found no evidence to suggest that the teaching of traditional grammar, specifically word order or syntax, was effective in assisting writing quality or accuracy of five- to 16-year-olds.