Friday, September 16, 2011

A humble suggestion for SUN News

The other night I was watching Brian Lilley on the Byline.  Love the show, love the hair, love the guy (in a chaste, intellectual, journalistic way, of course). And the topic was deadly serious. But I was disappointed to see some woefully wonky spelling on those subtitle thingys (sorry, I'm not a TV geek; don't know the terminology) on his program the other night. I could not find the video on SUN's site, so you'll have to take my word for it. (Come to think of it, I could not remember whether the noun in question was "choice" or "body", so I'm leaving a blank. Too distracted by the spelling/usage errors, I guess.)

Instead of saying (correctly) "Whose ________ is it anyway?"

it said this: "Who's ________ is it anyways?"

My goodness. Powers at SUN, if you don't want left-lib Canadians to think your station is run by a bunch of dumb redneck asshats with a grade 6 education, then for pity's sake, don't give them ammunition! Hire staff members who know how to spell. FYI:


1) "Who's" is a contraction for "who is" or "who has"
2) "Whose" is a possessive pronoun 
3) "Anyway" vs "Anyways" (Courtesy Daily Writing Tips)"
“Anyway” is an adverb, and it means regardless or in any event.  
“Any way” is a paired adjective and noun meaning any particular course, direction, or manner. 
Then we have “anyways,” a colloquial corruption of “anyway.” It’s universally considered nonstandard and should be avoided altogether. It might help to remember that “anyway” is an adverb, and adverbs can’t be plural.
(Still not sure I'll actually subscribe to this channel. I haven't yet recovered from the absence of Theo.)

1 comment:

  1. I'm also still mad that SUN went off the air about three days after I bought a digital converter.

    ReplyDelete