Them’s Fighting Words

I don’t know if it’s maturity, experience or just plain crankiness. It appears I’ve become a nitpicker!

In the past few years, I’ve been noticing sloppy publishing in our local newspaper, which is skeletal compared to say The New York Times, and in the novels I love to devour as rapidly as I can. No matter how quickly I zip through some of them, I can’t seem to miss glaring typos. I recently read Stephen King’s tome 11/22/63 and except for the overuse of the word obdurate, I found no glaring typos. Do they even edit his books anymore?

I can’t speak about magazines as I rarely read them. Is it just me or are the proof-readers slacking off? Is this another job class that has disappeared from the workplace?

Our local newspaper, for instance, seems to have MORE corrections to sales advertising than I’ve been aware of in recent years. Daily. And it varies. Then there are the news items, some of which are printed from other papers from across the pond. This is a small sample I found on just two separate occasions because they JUMPED out at me. Maybe I noticed them because my glasses were clean.

• …Michael minds the net during a friendly against the…(on the front PAGE!)
• The man later retreated to home on…
• In icons had intended to start shipping the…
• Obama pointed point out that…
• What some say is still is biggest problem…

Probably there is no use making a big deal about it and I’m not sure that I am, but why is this happening more rather than less? Is everyone in such a hurry to publish that the thought is: “Oh well, who’s going to notice anyway?”

I keep noticing and I don’t like it! What are standards for anyway?