{"id":3298,"date":"2010-06-01T06:35:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T05:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3298"},"modified":"2013-11-29T00:11:24","modified_gmt":"2013-11-29T00:11:24","slug":"some-more-bad-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=3298","title":{"rendered":"Some more bad writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lest anyone thinks bad writing is solely the domain of foreigners…<\/em><\/p>\n

The BBC News website (http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk) is home to writing crimes too.<\/p>\n

Some.<\/p>\n

What does that word mean to you?<\/p>\n

No, really, that’s not a rhetorical question: What does the word ‘some’ mean to you?<\/p>\n

To me, the word ‘some’ is an indefinite pronoun. It is a grouping device, used to describe an unspecified quantity.<\/p>\n

Thinks: do people even understand what a pronoun is, these days?<\/em><\/p>\n

Correct examples of the word ‘some’ would be: ‘I shall have some cereal’ and ‘I would like some tea’.<\/p>\n

So, in broad terms, it would be correct to use ‘some’ where the precise amount of what is being described – or named – is not known.<\/p>\n

An incorrect use of the word ‘some’ would be to construct a sentence where the precise amount of that thing is<\/strong> known.<\/p>\n

And this, my friends, is the trap that the BBC News website falls in to on a daily – daily!<\/strong> – basis.<\/p>\n

Today’s howler is the first paragraph of this item<\/a>, that begins with the cringeworthy sentence:<\/p>\n

Some 171 civil servants are paid more than Prime Minister David Cameron’s \u00a3142,500-a-year salary, according to Cabinet Office figures.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What?<\/p>\n

No, really.<\/p>\n

What?<\/p>\n

If you examine the logical structure of that sentence, it actually does not make sense.<\/p>\n

Using the word ‘some’ next to the precise number of things the piece is talking about is the construction of nonsense.<\/p>\n

This is a good example of a lazy writer using a word just for the sake of using the word, even if, as a result of using that word, the sentence is rendered in to gibberish.<\/p>\n

I know that BBC News are going through turbulent times. I know that staff are being laid-off and that website content production is a task that, in theory, almost anyone could do. But is it really necessary to have the news output of this country’s state broadcaster presented to the world as meaningless rubbish?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, as I said at the start of this piece, this use of the word ‘some’ is a daily crime at the BBC News website.<\/p>\n

Indeed, later in the article we see that:<\/p>\n

Some 28 of those earning over \u00a3150,000 are in the Ministry of Justice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good grief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lest anyone thinks bad writing is solely the domain of foreigners… The BBC News website (http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk) is home to writing crimes too. Some. What does<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}