Unintelligibly illiterate BBC News article link text

[LarsMac]

The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800m (12,500ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65602182

That is such total gibberish that I have absolutely no idea how to interpret it into meaningful English. I hurd it announced on Radio 4 this morning and I was convinced my ears had betrayed me.

If anyone has a suggestion I would be grateful.

Basically thy sent a bunch of drones with "digital imaging cameras" down there, took a shitload of pictures, retrieved them, and "assembled the images" into a recognizable 3D facsimile of the area in a computer system used for Digital Graphic Imagery. similar technology to the equipment that was used to create the Avatar flicks.

[spot]

The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800m (12,500ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65602182

That is such total gibberish that I have absolutely no idea how to interpret it into meaningful English. I hurd it announced on Radio 4 this morning and I was convinced my ears had betrayed me.

If anyone has a suggestion I would be grateful.

Basically thy sent a bunch of drones with "digital imaging cameras" down there, took a shitload of pictures, retrieved them, and "assembled the images" into a recognizable 3D facsimile of the area in a computer system used for Digital Graphic Imagery. similar technology to the equipment that was used to create the Avatar flicks.

It's the "full-sized" I have trouble with. What's a full-sized digital scan? If they captured the location and nature of each surface atom I could possibly forgive them, but they can't have. At any other resolution, "full-sized" is outside of my understanding. I would even argue with "complete" if they'd used complete but they didn't even do that. What they have is a good scan, or a better scan, or the best current scan depending on your criteria, but it's neither full-sized nor even complete.

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Ukraine’s air force said it downed 52 out of the 54 Russia-launched drones, calling it a record attack with the Iranian-made “kamikaze” drones.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... e-birthday

I wonder whether that attributed statement has any tinge of rhetoric about it.

What is an Iranian-made “kamikaze” drone?

I'm not sure I've ever seen any reference to, for example, a kamikaze cruise missile, or a kamikaze V1 or V2, or a kamikaze bunker-buster, or a kamikaze ICBM. So why an Iranian-made kamikaze drone? The essence of a drone is that it has nobody on board. That's the point of having the word drone in the first place. An on-board pilot is what turns any flying thing into an instance of a not-a-drone. Whereas the essence of "kamikaze" is that it's a death-ride for a pilot trained specifically to kill the enemy by committing suicide with an explosive plane strapped to his shoulders.

I think the Guardian should at least point out that the words they're quoting make no sense beyond adding visceral propaganda to the news item.

[LarsMac]

Well, there are drones that do more than just fly themselves into a target. The press seems to love digging up old terms and re-using them for some other purpose.

[spot]

Hogarth, an artist, critic and satirist, depicted two biblical stories in the works, the Pool of Bethesda and the Good Samaritan, in the 1730s. They feature 2.1-metre (7ft) high figures, some drawn from real life.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... s-hospital

I'm left wondering what function the word "real" performs. What alternative life is the writer comparing with?

At H 416 x W 618 cm, I'm tempted to ask whether anyone would like to paint me a faithful copy using modern materials. I rather like it.

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Before they were hunted to extinction, sea otters roamed the waters from Alaska to Baja California.

[...] A California otter is making headlines for her unique, and worrying, interactions with surfers.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... california

Somewhere in the Guardian's London office there is a totally illiterate copywriter who should be serving snacks to reporters instead of wrecking news articles online.

[spot]

Perhaps someone can explain the quote marks inside the following sentence:

The criminal exploits of a Sheffield gang involved with numerous shootings on the city's streets, targeting members of 'rival' groups, over the last three years have been laid bare.

https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/crime/cr ... ed-4241396

This is a local newspaper which, in my experience, means it should be better written than anything at the national level. The quote marks leave me baffled.

[LarsMac]

Not the BBC, but this headline was on the AP news site today.

Black bear shot and killed by Montana man in his living room after break-in

So, a Montana man broke in to the Black Bear's living room and shot him?
Did I get that right?

https://apnews.com/article/bear-killed- ... bc07257c86

[Bryn Mawr]

Not the BBC, but this headline was on the AP news site today.

Black bear shot and killed by Montana man in his living room after break-in

So, a Montana man broke in to the Black Bear's living room and shot him?
Did I get that right?

https://apnews.com/article/bear-killed- ... bc07257c86

That is what is says

[spot]

I... go on, I'll just put the article link text up. "How safe is my data after a hack or leak?"

Now, I know what "safe" means, and I have a fairly informed opinion on what "hack" or "leak" means. And "data" - I know what data are.

That leaves just what the BBC means by "my" and "after".

Something in that article link text clearly has to be meaningless, because the entire text carries nothing to me at all.

Someone try, go on. Explain what "How safe is my data after a hack or leak?" means.

The article is at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66451970

[spot]

They have found more evidence that sub-atomic particles, called muons, are not behaving in the way predicted by the current theory of sub-atomic physics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66407099

I do wish people who write professionally would take the trouble to write what they mean. Sub-atomic particles are not called muons, Muons are a variety of sub-atomic particles.

Writing "more evidence that muons, a form of sub-atomic particle, are not behaving" would actually convey what was intended.

The worst and laziest excuse in the world when it comes to accurate expression is "they know what I mean".

[spot]

Quarter of music industry workers have had no work in EU since Brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... nce-brexit

What cobblers. A quarter of *British* music industry workers have had no work in EU since Brexit. There's clearly at least one comatose copy-editor who should be redeployed as a telephone sanitizer.

As for "A quarter of British music industry workers have had no work in EU since Brexit", it would help if the article said what proportion of British music industry workers had any work at all in EU before Brexit. If I had to guess I'd say it was over half, but what do I know.

Those adversely affected should have made a bigger fuss before the referendum. The adversity is a consequence of supine indifference beforehand. If you want a sensible country, get involved and make it happen.

[spot]

Oh dear oh dear...

‘We can do one big celebration’: Ohio couple shares birthday with new twins

Scierra Blair and her fiance, Jose Ervin Jr, were born a year apart on 18 August, and newborn twins were born on their joint birthday

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... born-twins

And the chances of that?

One in 133,440 American families with twins are in the same boat.

I'm not sure it's entirely newsworthy. They even have their photo in the paper.

In a statement to the Guardian, Dr Jeniffer Eaton – the chairperson of Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest’s obstetrics and gynecology department – confirmed, “It’s extremely rare for both parents and their newborn twins to all share the same birthday.”

On the contrary, this exact event happens three times a week in the USA.

[spot]

Why Scotland is lagging far behind England on solar power developments

https://www.scotsman.com/news/environme ... ts-4269606

Umm...

I'm not sure I can bring myself to comment.

[LarsMac]

Oh dear oh dear...

‘We can do one big celebration’: Ohio couple shares birthday with new twins

Scierra Blair and her fiance, Jose Ervin Jr, were born a year apart on 18 August, and newborn twins were born on their joint birthday

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... born-twins

And the chances of that?

One in 133,440 American families with twins are in the same boat.

I'm not sure it's entirely newsworthy. They even have their photo in the paper.

In a statement to the Guardian, Dr Jeniffer Eaton – the chairperson of Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest’s obstetrics and gynecology department – confirmed, “It’s extremely rare for both parents and their newborn twins to all share the same birthday.”

On the contrary, this exact event happens three times a week in the USA.

On a similar vein, How often do twins have different birthdays?

My nephew's twins were born not only in different days, but different months (Same, year, in case you were wondering).

[spot]

On a similar vein, How often do twins have different birthdays?

My nephew's twins were born not only in different days, but different months (Same, year, in case you were wondering).

That is tricky. There are two things going on. One is the overlap from one month to another during a normal twin delivery, the other is "delayed-interval delivery" with weeks or even longer than a month between deliveries, both of which have shockingly high mortality rates (one in three live first children, two in three live second children, which is only one in five such complications resulting in twins).

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/multiple.htm is the CDC figures, to show what numbers are significant. I'd bet there are fewer than 100 delayed-interval delivery events in the US in a year but I've no idea how to confirm that. However, with 114,161 twin births a year I think these are the main source of different birthdays for twins.

The average gap between two live births with twins is perhaps 10 minutes. Going a long time beyond that is unsafe for the second child, surgeons intervene with scalpels to avoid long delays, it all gets unpleasant, but 5 to 15 minutes is not unusual.

So, how many 10 minute units overlap the end of a day. A day has 144 ten-minute units, one of which results in different birthdays. That's 114,161 / 2 / 144 events = 396 pairs of children with different birthdays each year, roughly one a day. 13 pairs of children with birthdays in different months, roughly one event per month across the US. I doubt those figures would change much if delayed-interval delivery events with two live births were added.

[LarsMac]

In nephews' case, one (Daughter) was born at 11:44 PM February 28, the other (Son) at 12:08 AM March 1.

[spot]

In nephews' case, one (Daughter) was born at 11:44 PM February 28, the other (Son) at 12:08 AM March 1.

There you are then. Four times less likely than both parents and their newborn twins to all share the same birthday.

[spot]

I have no idea what these words are meant to indicate.

One in five children regularly miss school, figures show

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66701748

The inside article fares no better. The only other clue is a completely unrelated statement, "More than one in five children in England are frequently missing school, data shows".

I pose a scenario: a child misses the first school day of November every year throughout their academic life, and no other. That is the epitome of regular but it most definitely isn't frequent.

Or, for the fun of it, the child throws a die every school day and doesn't attend if the roll is a 1. That is definitively frequent but it is completely irregular.

It would be the simplest thing in the world for the article to actually say what the problem is, or where the problem's boundaries lie. Why on earth are they incapable?

[Bryn Mawr]

Norwich City: Delia Smith set to lose majority shareholding in club as Mark Attanasio increases stake

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66707902

Delia and her husband currently have a 40% stake between them and the Milwaukee Brewer is increasing his stake to 40%.

Where do the BBC get the claim that Delia has, now or ever, held a majority shareholding from? She and her husband between them might well have been the largest joint shareholders but they did not hold a majority of the shares and could have been outvoted at any meeting.

[spot]

Britain’s climate ambitions have suffered a blow after no new offshore windfarms were secured in the government’s latest clean energy auction despite there being the potential for 5 gigawatts of projects – enough to power 8m homes a year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... nd-auction

When will these people ever learn? What sort of example are they setting today's schoolchildren?

Just as well no schoolchildren follow BBC News any longer.

The world's not what it was in my day.

When I was a lad, that number of projects would have powered 8m homes every week. Mind you, we only owned a radio and a lightbulb and a flatiron back then, they could probably have powered every house in the country. The average house nowadays uses an average load of 600 watts. I think I get by on 300 because I'm a well brought up parsimonious sod and I turn off the light when I leave a room and I never over-fill the kettle.

It occurs to me that a really big wind farm would only have been half a project anyway. The entire sentence should have been strangled at birth. And was "climate ambitions have suffered a blow" meant to be a wind farm joke?

If anyone at BBC News is capable of verifying "enough to power 8m homes for forty years", it would qualify as news. I'm not sure anyone has come clean over that yet, whether a North Sea wind farm can provide electricity beyond forty years. The 8 gigawatt tranche could then be described as offering 1.7 petawatt hours of energy, which an extremely small Dyson swarm could supply in just a few microseconds. Perhaps wind farms are an obsolete technology. The UK could have its own extremely small Dyson swarm up and running by 2060 if it got its governmental finger out and just built one.

[spot]

A TfL spokesperson added: [...] "The rest of the advertising campaign for Workspace was deemed compliant and four different creatives will be running on our network."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66778007

What in high heaven is "four different creatives will be running on our network" meant to mean? What PR jargon is Transport for London spouting? And why is the BBC News website giving it house room?

[spot]

Walker is the chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, a small group of Indigenous Americans who once lived along the coast of San Luis Obispo county. Records of their occupation of the central coast date back to 18,000 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... california

Date back to 18,000 years BCE? or date back 18,000 years?

But that's not the point really. The point is "Records". As in "Records of their occupation of the central coast". I'm lost for words. What qualifies as a record in this scenario, or what qualifies as "their" if it comes to that. I have trouble enough deciding who founded Ur 6,000 years ago, and you have !!Records!! dating back three times farther?

I think your reporter got carried away. Perhaps "Evidence for occupation of the central coast dates back 18,000 years" would entail less instant disbelief.

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crystal jellyfish who can grow up to a foot wide, have 150 tentacles and are usually found some 2,000 miles away in the Mediterranean. But, do not worry, their sting is not too painful.

Swimmers in Devon and Cornwall have been left stunned by the arrival of thousands of them this week.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... ve-8797239

Well that sounds pretty painful to me then.

[spot]

"Wes Streeting says Labour will come down on vaping industry ‘like tonne of bricks’ over sales to children – live"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... itics-live

No, that's not what he said at all. "Like a ton of bricks" is metaphorical, it's not a weight. 1,000 kilograms is a tonne. A ton of bricks is a lot of bricks. It does not invite you to get your scales out and check, it invites you to imagine that Wes Streeting said the vaping industry will be left in no doubt they're in trouble.

[spot]

Good lord, it's unstoppable.

He was known as the titular hero of 1970s TV detective series Baretta and starred in the 1997 film Lost Highway, but his career struggled following his wife's 2001 fatal shooting.

This following example is so strange it's utterly meaningless:

Mehrjui, who studied in the US as a young man and later lived in France for five years, first rose to national and international prominence with his 1969 film The Cow, which tells the story about a villager's obsession with the titular animal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67118052

"The titular animal"? The animal that was not actually a cow but was given the honorific status of cow?

I wouldn't even want to use "the eponymous cow" but that's better than this abuse of titular.

[spot]

And the Yorkshire Post reports that train operator Northern has started to broadcast predatory hawk calls through speakers to deter defecating pigeons from Driffield Station in East Yorkshire. The paper says it's hoped the noises will give commuters some respite from pigeons who regularly carpet bomb the platforms with faeces.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-67108304

Faeces? Faeces???

Droppings! Or, in commercial quantities, guano.

Birds are not constructed like mammals who produce faeces, the material under discussion is not primarily the product of the bird's intestinal tract, it is mostly dehydrated urine, the word faeces is as inappropriate as spit or sweat.

[spot]

Curry ‘getting support’ after receiving threats following racial slur allegation

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/ ... -world-cup

Tim Curry? Declan Curry? Jedidiah Curry?

Why on earth do news sub-editors think a single surname is adequate in a news report? I started out thinking it was Edwina Currie until I remembered she was different. You might as well call him Jeff, it's just as ambiguous.

[spot]

I'm quite puzzled by the label against the following photo at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... -off-stage


The Globe theatre in the days of Shakespeare. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

globe.jpg (103.65 KiB) Viewed 3636 times

[Betty Boop]

I'm quite puzzled by the label against the following photo at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... -off-stage


The Globe theatre in the days of Shakespeare. Photograph: Bettmann Archive




globe.jpg

You don't think it is actually The Globe?
Or you don't think it is a photo? Is it a drawing ? Maybe the word 'image' would be better?

[spot]

England's only tea grower has a record 600 species of flower in bloom

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornw ... rd-9018879

What?

How a "Senior Content Editor" can write that I have no idea.

https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn: ... es:39017-1

"Includes 230 Accepted Species"

In the quote, replace the words "species of flower" with "number of flowers". Seriously. That was the "news".

[spot]

Brunei's Prince's royal wedding reaches climax
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world

[Bryn Mawr]

Brunei's Prince's royal wedding reaches climax
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world

In public too!