Media mistakes

[prpr]

Watching the news on iPlayer, the presenter stated a wildfire "covers a 0.6 mile area".

Most journos don't understand anything vaguely technical. This includes fairly elementary maths. Forget units, unless it's Olympic swimming pools, double-decker buses or football pitches, as these are the de-facto standard measurements of volume, length(height) and area.

a pet hate of mine... "off of".

Yes, an ex-colleague insisted on saying that repeatedly. It got quite wearing. I called her Penelope Pit-stop (not to her face) - you can imagine the type. Thankfully she moved on.

The easy substitution is "from"

It would have fitted most of hers.

"...it expected the [vehicles] to be present until at least midnight, although they were 'likely to be required for longer' ".

It gets the word count up and adds nothing, so they don't have to think up any more 'facts'.

A £180 licence for a litany of errors

You should see the $h*te that ends up on Appl3 News, a lot of which (allegedly) comes from our national newspapers.

 

[gomezz]

I have just made a post elsewhere and accidentally used of instead of off.

Thing is I noticed it too late but if I now edit the post it flags it with an edited timestamp which troubles my OCD so I have left it. Fair enough to timestamp a substantive or late edit but I would rather the chance to do a spelling mistake or bad grammar edit in the few minutes after originally posting when usually no-one else has yet read it and had a chance to get upset by a post-read edit.

 

[prpr]

in the few minutes after originally posting when usually no-one else has yet read it

You might think that, but...

 

[Wildebeest]

No-one's mentioned yet that 1 km = 0.6 miles but 1 square km = 0.39 square miles.

(edited from 0.38 to 0.39 as I'd truncated rather than rounded. Oh damn it, 0.4 to match precisions!)

 

[Black Hole]

if I now edit the post it flags it with an edited timestamp which troubles my OCD so I have left it

An "edited" flag is far less embarrassing than derisible content!

AvP: "it will flag it" not "it flags it". Please don't succumb to the present-tense narrative fad when you mean future tense!

 

[trog]

Watching the news on iPlayer, the presenter stated a wildfire "covers a 0.6 mile area". Also, attached is the online version; marginally better with its power of two (on one measurement) but in doing so seems to have invented a new unit: "sqkm". Also, a pet hate of mine... "off of". Also, it mixes having a space between the number and the units (but even then, it wasn't a non-breaking one), and not having one, in the same sentence. Also, don't emergency workers attend a "scene" not a "site"? Also, the BBC said that the fire service also stated: "...it expected the [vehicles] to be present until at least midnight, although they were 'likely to be required for longer' ". Glad that's cleared up then. Also, is this the forum post with the most sentences beginning "also"? A £180 licence for a litany of errors (which Firefox on Win 11 wants to "correct" to license, despite all my settings being on UK). Good job I'm on blood pressure medication.

Nostradamus Jagger predicted the advent of data storage and your woes.