Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Gonig, Goign, Gnoe

The Guardian newspaper is so famous for its frequent typos that it is affectionately known in Britain as the Grauniad. But even by the paper's usual standards, its website's story on the funeral of Boris Yeltsin takes some beating. For a start, the headline misspells his name: Russian church and state unite to farewell Yelstin.

Skipping over the inelegant use of "farewell" as a verb, we are then informed that, "The signs of years of ill health were harshly written on the face of Boris Yeltsin's face". His face has a face?!

Yeltsin was notorious for making a fool of himself when, as the Irish say, "having drink taken". Perhaps the Grauniad's sub-editor had just come back from the pub himself?

[On clicking on the links again, I find they have already fixed the spelling error, but not yet the othetr mistake. This may change, of course - unlike printed material, online text is easy to amend.]

No comments: