The bomb was placed in a taxi... twice

Nothing very exciting today - just a bit of image and caption duplication I spotted on BBC News a while back:

I like capturing mistakes like these, not so I can feel smug, but because they are often corrected so quickly (especially on the BBC website).

Somehow their ephemeral nature makes me want to preserve them for posterity.

'50 odd people are being killed every single day'

According to BBC News (or more accurately, Pretoria News crime reporter Graeme Hosken), 50 odd people are killed every day in South Africa.

Sometimes it pays to be normal.

Gordon Brown's legacy

BBC News has been running a story titled 'What is Gordon Brown's legacy?':

Nothing, apparently.

An area equivalent to the size of Greece

A recent BBC News article mentions "the discovery of a vast 'microbial mat', covering an area equivalent to the size of Greece".

It's unusual to see Greece used as a unit of comparison or measurement. I find it harder to gauge the area of Greece than, say, France, because of Greece's irregular shape and large number of islands. Or are we only talking about mainland Greece?

Interestingly, the country closest in size to Greece is England, with an area of 130,395km2 as opposed to Greece's 131,957km2.

So why didn't BBC News use England as a unit of comparison rather than Greece? I'm fairly sure that a) more British people will read the article in question than Greek people, and b) British people have a better idea of the area of England than the area of Greece.

Or would using England as a unit of comparison be more confusing to readers who are neither Greek nor British? When I taught English as a foreign language in Russia, many of my students were hazy on the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.

Thousands 'to miss out on university degree'

I thought this was a strange BBC News headline:

First, there are two orders of magnitude between "thousands" (headline) and "hundreds of thousands" (body copy). A quick play with Firebug suggests that "Hundreds of thousands 'to miss out on university degree'" would fit - just - as a headline, although I grant you that it's not particularly catchy.

Second, the story isn't that people will miss out on degrees - it's that they will miss out on university places altogether (although one tends to follow the other). To me, the headline as stands suggests that thousands of people currently at university will miss out on a degree. And while that's probably true, it's not reflective of the story.

Is it always wrong to wear your trousers too high?

I seem to be going through another BBC News phase. Here's something I spotted on the site a little while back:


Is it always wrong to wear your trousers too high? Yes, by definition - the word too means "to a higher degree than is desirable, permissible, or possible" (Concise OED). 'Possible' isn't applicable here but 'desirable' and 'permissible' both could be.

A fairer question would be 'Is it always wrong to wear your trousers high?'.

'Powerful intimate relationship with a co-worker'

From a recent BBC News article called Sex at work: weapon or repression?:


The first par: "Research... shows that 60% of all workers have had a powerful intimate relationship with a co-worker."

The fourth par: "[Kakabadse] realises that it might be hard to believe that six out of 10 colleagues are involved in an intimate relationship"

There's a world of difference between "have had" and "are involved in"!

(I'm also not keen on swapping between "60%" and "six out of 10", but that's a different issue...)

Schumacher to 'quickly surpass' Mansell's age

Gingerous has written in with some interesting comments on a recent BBC Sport article called 'Michael Schumacher targets F1 title with Mercedes team'. Here's the particular par he refers to:

Schumacher is the oldest driver to compete in F1 since Nigel Mansell made a brief comeback in 1994, also at the age of 41 - and the German will quickly surpass the Englishman's age as the year progresses.

And here's what Gingerous has to say:

Two things popped into my head when I read this - firstly, can you quickly surpass an age? Surely we all age at the same rate.

Secondly, technically he won't surpass Nigel Mansell's age since at the time of writing this Nigel Mansell is still alive and with us and currently 56.

Obviously this is just me being pedantic and the article does make sense.

As everyone ages at the same rate, I agree that the word 'quickly' is a bit of a strange choice. Perhaps the writer means 'soon'? And 'as the year progresses' also sounds odd to me. Perhaps it would be better to tell us exactly when Schumacher will become the oldest driver ever to compete in F1.

The BBC and Tim Berner's Lee

Here's some of the worst subbing I've seen on the BBC News website for quite a while:



The first par shown needs to be broken up - it took me three reads to get the sense of it. Then there's the apostrophe in Tim Berners Lee's name. And of course the stray 'his' in the third par.

The rest of the article is little better - particularly this short par:

Despite this, people like former US Vice-President Al Gore is an online optimist.

To be honest, I'm not shocked or offended at all - it's just nice to be reminded that nobody's perfect.

• BBC News: The rise of the web's digital elites

Headlines: 'Bizarre cricket caught on camera'

The sixth headline in this BBC News 'Most Popular Stories Now' widget confused me briefly:


Bizarre cricket? Could the Beeb mean Twenty20?

(OK, here's the real story.)

Icy playground shortages

From a BBC News article today:


I didn't know the UK was suffering from icy playground shortages!

Ambiguous BBC News headline: 'Children's boss axed after death'

I'm not sure about the BBC News headline 'Children's boss axed after death':



So first the children's boss died, and then someone hacked at her corpse with an axe? Wait, no - it wasn't her death, and she was only axed metaphorically.

Even changing 'axed' to 'sacked' would have made for a better headline - and it's not as if two extra characters would have caused it to bust.


UPDATE - I've just looked again at the story on the BBC News website and spotted that the headline has been rewritten since I took my original screengrab yesterday:


So 'axed' has become 'fired' and 'death' is now qualified with 'toddler'. In addition, 'Children's boss' has become 'Salford children's director'.

BBC News: 'Thousands of Vicks spray recalled'

I like BBC News, I really do. But I did spot this recently:


"Thousands of Vicks spray recalled" - shouldn't that be 'sprays'?

The headline on the story currently reads "Procter & Gamble recalls 120,000 Vicks nasal sprays" - but "Thousands of Vicks spray recalled" still comes up as a result when you search the BBC website.

Especially on the web, mistakes can be pervasive.

BBC News promoting unavailable content

So I was reading a Robert Peston blog post on the BBC News website when I spotted what looked like an interesting article being promoted in the sidebar:



Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link only to be confronted with this:



First off, it was a radio broadcast rather than a words-and-pictures article or feature. Like many people I'm much more selective about what I listen to than what I read, simply because I find that audio needs a greater investment of time and concentration. In fact, I wouldn't have clicked on the link had it been clear that it led to a radio broadcast. So I felt slightly misled.

But much worse than that was the message that "this programme is not available to listen again". Why bother promoting it elsewhere on the site, then?

In fact, all the Beeb managed to do was take me away from a blog post that I was fairly interested in reading - in order to give me information on a radio programme that I had already missed, could not catch up on, and probably wouldn't have invested the time in listening to even if I was able.

'I assumed that it was a suicidal note'

BBC News is running a story today about a French love letter in a bottle that washed up on a Cornish beach.

The man who discovered the bottle, Martin Leslie, is quoted as saying: "I assumed that it was a suicidal note that we came across."

Suicidal note: a note that tries to kill itself...

• Associated Press: Former child actor Joe Pichler missing, suicidal note found; was in `Beethoven' comedies

Leona Lewis attacked by fan / buck-toothed nut

So singer Leona Lewis has been punched in the head at a book signing. Here's the BBC News headline and intro:




Even if the man who attacked Lewis bought a copy of her autobiography and queued up nicely for a signature, I still think it's a bit of a stretch to assume he is a "fan".

The Sun, on the other hand, calls the attacker a "geeky bumpkin", a "maniac", "warped" and a "buck-toothed nut".

BBC finally assumes people know what Twitter is

A few weeks ago the BBC News website ran a story entitled Hundreds on Armstrong Tweet ride. It began:

About 300 people have joined an impromptu bike ride with cycling legend Lance Armstrong after he issued an open invitation on a Twitter post

Interestingly, the story doesn't say what Twitter actually is. Until now, the Beeb seems to have felt the need to explain that it is a "micro-blogging service" (as in this story from April), a "social messaging network" (as in this story, from the same month), or a "social networking website" (as in this story, again from April).

So does the Lance Armstrong story mark a change in house style? Without trawling through dozens more stories on the BBC News website - which I may do if I get bored - it's difficult to tell...

Headlines: 'Brown book breaks record in hours'

The ninth headline down in this BBC News 'Most Popular Stories Now' widget caused me some confusion:


What was this brown book, and why was it breaking records?

After a moment's thought, I came to the conclusion that it must be a book about (or possibly by) prime minister Gordon Brown.

Obviously, I was wrong: the book in question was Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol. The cover does look fairly brown, though.

If the BBC cares about SEO, it really should include the title (or at least the name of the author) in the headline of an article about a book.


BBC News: Brown book breaks record in hours

'Swedes miss Capri after GPS gaffe'

I meant to blog about this news story when I first saw it, a couple of weeks back:

Swedes miss Capri after GPS gaffe

It begins:

A Swedish couple in search of the isle of Capri drove to Carpi, an industrial town in northern Italy, because they misspelt the name in their car's GPS.

And I especially like this:

"Capri is an island. They did not even wonder why they didn't cross any bridge or take any boat," said a bemused tourism official in Carpi.

Does the story illustrate the importance of correct spelling or the importance of common sense? Probably more the latter...

Oh, and here's a photo of Capri (not Carpi):

Photo from Flickr

'You can't even trust the establishment'

From the BBC News website yesterday:

More than 1,000 police officers and staff who misused corporate credit cards will not be punished, a police watchdog has decided.

The Metropolitan Police Authority found 1,183 Met employees used the American Express cards for personal spending.

From Metro's letters page today:

What is the world coming to when you can't even trust the establishment itself?

I'd say it's pretty much business as usual.