Writers of the world! Take a look at the second sentence of the last paragraph of the article excerpted below and tell me what’s wrong with it. Then tell me how:
1. the Los Angeles Times could justify hiring a sub-literate celebrity commentator who doesn’t know how to conjugate verbs.
2. such an appalling misuse of the English language could waltz across the Los Angeles Times copy desk, unnoticed, and land on the pages of a newspaper that’s read by roughly one million people each day.
I used to scoff when my father complained about the “dumbing down of America.” I believed the world was full of talented writers and journalists who passed third-grade grammar class. Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe they’re a dying breed after all.
Hollywood rethinks chick flicks
By Rachel Abramowitz
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 11, 2008
What you see on the screen, big or little, is only part of the story. Rachel Abramowitz’s new column, Hollywood Brief, gives the town’s culture, personalities and power players the close-up they deserve — but may not always want.
ARE YOU ready for “Desperate Housewives, the Movie”? “Grey’s Anatomy: Bigger, Sappier” and filled with an array of new luscious boy toys ( Brad Pitt as Dr. McCreamy)? How about “Sex and the City: Cougars Live” edition? Personally I’d see “America’s Next Top Model” the cinematic version, as long as Tyra brings her riding crop and commands the wannabe models to look fierce as they bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower in thongs and tiaras.
I’m being facetious, but I bet ya some genius out in Burbank is dreaming up ideas just like this. That’s because I and half of Hollywood is trying to parse the lessons of the resounding success (unexpected to some) of the “Sex and the City” movie, the event film for women.
July 25, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Not to stick up for bad editing or (certainly) Rachel Abramowitz, who almost surely typed that in the first place, but to me this is another data point in the slashing of the editing function by bosses, who (panicked by the ever-present Angel of Death hovering nearby) have decided editors are expendable. To the point that Miami and Orange County have outsourced copy desks to India. I find this highly inadvisable and hope they will too, as soon as folks in New Delhi try to keep up daily with things like construction on the 405.
An elegy for copy editors in the NYT.