Media Typos

I used to consider traditional mass media (newspapers and TV news) to be good role models for spelling and grammar. That is no longer the case. I am sure that the deterioration has been gradually going on for years but since I neither read newspapers nor watch the the TV news I was missing it the transition.

It is terribly easy to transpose a couple of letters when typing quickly, and to fail to notice one’s mistake. Who hasn’t done that? But some of the errors I see go way beyond that to using words completely out of context.

Now I see so many spelling errors, grammatical errors, slang and even incorrect use of words that it makes me sad about the state of education in this country that editors are missing such big mistakes so often.

If you type “media typos” into Google you’ll see a lot of examples that will have you shaking your head and making you wonder if nobody ever proofreads anymore.

Is this a reflection on the state of our educational system? I wouldn’t be surprised given how rarely do I see quality writing at work, and even with a lot of the Kindle books that I read from the Amazon store. It seems that those able to write decent sentences seem to be of an older generation and a lot of people seem to rely on auto-correct instead of a real editor.

While English has been my primary language for 15 years, it was my second language for the first half of my life so seeing errors like these always confuse me at first and make me question myself.  It amazes me how many people read the example above and don’t catch the error.   As a homeschooler, this is something that I will need to keep in mind with my children to ensure that they don’t have the same level of confusion once they are older and start to have more media exposure.