Headlines in the papers tell of fighting in the streets

[venta]

I do try not to harp on about grammar. I really do. A lot of the time someone misses out an apostrophe and hey, it's wrong, but I knew what they meant. I know my punctuation isn't always perfect either.

But, dear BBC, you are a reputable journalistic institution. And that missing hyphen completely changed the meaning of the headline.

Child killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy tells me that Robert Black, who is under 18, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

What you meant was Child-killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy, ie Robert Black, a convicted killer of children, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

Flippin' sort it out.

I do take it as read that, due to the law of St Sod, I will have misplaced at least one apostrophe in this post.

Comments

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, I was quite alarmed by a Swiss friend's understanding of the rules of English grammar vs my own.

Sad to say, I was actually taught a bit of grammar at school, but have since learnt that it was almost all wrong. For my first two secondary years we had a Geography teacher taching us English, and she was very keen to impart all sorts of nonsense she'd picked up goodness knows where. None of the actual English teachers I had subsequently paid any attention to grammar at all.