July 12, 2008 by ignatiof.

My latest hobby is making fun of vocm.com. I like to count the number of mistakes in their news articles. My record so far is 9 in one article. Here’s one I found today, copied verbatim, without permission, with mistakes listed below. I’m not going to get into the HTML problems or style concerns.

Collision On The Grand Banks
July 12, 2008

There was an usual incident about 160 miles off the coast last night. Maritime Search and Rescue Coordinator, Andy Caines, says it involved a minor collision between a French catamaran-style sail boat, the Traid Union and a Newfoundland crab fishing boat, the August Gale. The Wilfred Grenfell was dispatched to the scene and picked up the eight crew members. They are headed to St. John’s from the Banks but near-zero visibility is keeping speeds low.Caines says the condistions in the area were probably a contributing factor in the collision. No injuries are being reported but marine traffic is advised to be on the look-out for the abandoned and drifting boat.
Also, Friday saw Coast Guard activity off the South Labrador. The Coast Guard auxillary vessel, the Elizabeth Ann, towed a fishing boat, the Robert Bradford, into Cartwright today. The Bradford was disabled by engine failure off Grady Run. They should arrive in port today.

1. The article title should not have the words ‘On The’ capitalized. 
2. The boats’ names are not italicized (5 times)
3. There is no space before the sentence that starts ‘Caines says’
4. ‘Conditions’ is spelled ‘condistions’
5. There is an unrelated news item in an article called ‘Collision On the Grand Banks’
6. In the sentence starting ‘No injuries are being reported’, the two clauses are unrelated.

Posted in Stuff I Hate, The Newfie Times | Print | No Comments »

July 10, 2008 by ignatiof.

Most writers would use a title like ‘Very Low Caliber’ or something else with a lame pun to describe just how bad the Dodge Caliber is. I am not one of those writers.

It was very hard to find things to like about that car when I had it as a rental last month. Here’s the short list:

1. The gauge cluster looks nice in white
2. There is a hole in the passenger’s head restraint so you can grab something other than your girlfriend’s breasts when backing up. (They don’t like that.)

Everything else about the Caliber needs improvement.

Posted in Stuff I Hate, Stuff Like Other Stuff | Print | 2 Comments »

October 27, 2007 by ignatiof.

Continuing my long running series on things I hate, here are three words that I really can’t stand:

1. Arguably
2. Myriad
3. Utilize

I hate the first word because it’s just so… wishy washy. It’s like the person using it doesn’t have the cojones to say what they believe. The second word is used by someone who’s trying to sound smarter than they are. And the third word is used by someone who’s trying to sound smarter than they are.

Here are the three words I hate used in a sentence. I hate the words arguably, myriad, and utilize.

Posted in Stuff I Hate | Print | 4 Comments »