Unsplash,com/Marcus Winkler
In case you are wondering whether the “Horribly Wrong” team, at least half of it, came late to the issue of good writing/bad writing:
Recently, Eliot came across a paper he wrote in April 1977 (!!!) for a Journalism 301 class at the University of Florida. It was “BLOOPERS: Sloppy editing and its ramifications.” Talk about “The more things change, the more they stay the same!”
(An aside: Eliot was a grammar policeman even then. When guys in his frat pinned to the bulletin board notes about a concert ticket for sale, or an upcoming social, or a need for a ride home for spring break, Eliot would take a red pen to them. Honest. Made him real popular.)
Eliot’s “Bloopers” essay is no Elements of Style. But it has something in common with that revered tome: Goofs are not new. That doesn’t excuse them. In nearly a half century of writing, Eliot himself has made his share.
In JM 301, there wasn’t a lot of leeway. Students used actual police reports or other documents to write a news story. Eliot’s paper notes, and he grimly recalls, that a story turned in with a typo — recall we still used typewriters! — was an automatic one-grade drop. And any fact error — it could be a simple misspelling of a name — earned an automatic failing grade. (For some reason, UF used “E” instead of “F.” It allowed professors to smugly advise that a student should have been a little more diligent and was getting an “E for easy.”)
Eliot’s paper acknowledges what "Horribly Wrong" is saying decades later: “As has been seen in this class, some slip-ups can often be very humorous. But they can also be damaging and dangerous." (Yes. Grammatically, it should be “often can” and “also can.” Is there a statute of limitations?)
The essay gave some examples Eliot had found in area newspapers. Among them:
A story said Eastern Airlines (remember them?) changed a Miami-to-Gainesville flight from 7:15 p.m. to 7:05 p.m. But the story said 7:15 a.m. (No self-respecting college student would be up at that hour.)
A story said, "Women can obtain abortions if pregnancy is after 14 months." Biology 101 anyone?
A headline misspelled then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle as “Roselle.”
A series of news briefs included a 30-below-zero reading in Minneapolis and an anti-gay effort in Florida. The headline writer, desperate to be clever, wrote, "The Cold and the Gay."
A multi-deck headline ended up in the wrong order:
Stathe Plans
To Bring
And Plaza
Downtown
Back to Life
Eliot’s paper also says, "A story that has been written well but gets hurt by a typo or poor layout is not fair to the reporter who worked so hard to get his story right." In his ensuing career, Eliot lost some of his conceit, as he learned the hard way that far more often, it was the other way around. It was the editor who caught Eliot's goofs, thus averting catastrophe and saving Eliot from a dressing-down, or worse. Many times at The Palm Beach Post, that editor was none other than Lou Ann Frala, the "Horribly Wrong" Rules Committee.
PS: Eliot’s paper got a B-plus.
Watch this on video! https://youtu.be/KbPNFffGfvY
Next time: Not so fast!
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!