The Irish Times website

quarryman

Has anyone else noticed how poor quality the Irish Times website is? Grammar and spelling mistakes EVERYWHERE.

Yesterday I noticed the top headline had a spelling mistake. It wasn't even something that a spell checker could miss, the word was complete garbage. How hard is it to click the SpellCheck button in Word?

Here's one I've spotted today. 2nd paragraph: Activation survey of 109 US firms reveals that 90 per cent of companies surveyed were recruiting to recruit suitably skilled employee.

I can barely get through an article without seeing spelling mistakes or incorrect grammar leaving me wondering what the author actually meant. Awful stuff.

I thought the IT prided itself on accuracy, both content and presentation.

forfcksake

quarryman wrote: »

I though the IT prided itself on accuracy, both content and presentation.

"I thought" not "I though" :P

quarryman

forfcksake wrote: »

"I thought" not "I though" :P

ha, at least it's not a spelling mistake!

tommy21

I find the same alright the odd time with the Irish Times website, though I think its far more common on RTE.ie.

Cicero

don't like the navigation on it either

quarryman

tommy21 wrote: »

I find the same alright the odd time with the Irish Times website, though I think its far more common on RTE.ie.

not a chance. The IT is practically unreadable at times, RTE is a whole lot better. BreakingNews.ie is somewhere in between.

trio

I find it incredibly hard to navigate too.

Having "Life" "Society" and Culture" on the top - what on earth is the difference between them??

Wierdly, Television as a sub-section doesn't seem to exist, though Film & Stage are there....I'm sure it's somewhere, but I couldn't be arsed to find it.

Another really bizarre mistake I noticed in yesterdays "Hot Or Not" list.

Game of Thrones’ Can HBO do no wrong? From the makers of The Wire comes this gritty fantasy show – a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Tudors (in a good way), this is not for the faint-hearted

"Comes"?? Errrr.....it's over. The series ended last week. They're recommending a series no-one can see. It's unlikely it's even going to be repeated this year. Mind you, they didn't even bother saying what channel it was on, so......

Just really basic errors.

outandabout

Sub-editors who police the grammar, spelling and syntax in all papers and magazines are being made redundant or not being replaced.

The quality of all print media, including The Irish Times, has suffered as a result.

Snickers Man

outandabout wrote: »

Sub-editors who police the grammar, spelling and syntax in all papers and magazines are being made redundant or not being replaced.

The quality of all print media, including The Irish Times, has suffered as a result.

True. The point has been made before that writing and editing are two very different skills and those good at one may not necessarily be good at the other. But as the basic business model of journalism continues to erode, then the pressure on staff to "innovate" and "upskill" means not only that fewer people have to do a multiplicity of tasks but they may also have to do some tasks for which they are unsuited.

More and more reliance is being put on computer-aided control and checking but there is no substitute for a talented and trained pair of eyes.

One mistake I see being made frequently, and on many news websites especially in the UK, is the incorrect use of the indefinite article. The number of times I see "an" preceding a word beginning with a consonant is puzzling to me. It happens so often, and is so inexplicable (WHY would you do it? How could you make such a mistake?) that I can only assume it is an error caused by some blanket "search and replace" routine, but I am still at a loss to know exactly how it is happening.

Too many bloggers and not enough loggers.

IT'S ALL BOARDS.IE's FAULT!!!!

jmcc

Snickers Man wrote: »

But as the basic business model of journalism continues to erode, then the pressure on staff to "innovate" and "upskill" means not only that fewer people have to do a multiplicity of tasks but they may also have to do some tasks for which they are unsuited.

And there is always the simpler explanation that most of the people that end up in journalism are crap at journalism but very good at recycling PR fluff. The rot started years ago.

One mistake I see being made frequently, and on many news websites especially in the UK, is the incorrect use of the indefinite article. The number of times I see "an" preceding a word beginning with a consonant is puzzling to me.

Sometimes people will be editing a piece, remove a word, be interrupted and then return to editing the piece. They may forget to completely edit the sentence where there is now an error. Perhaps it is the find and replace algorithm but it is more likely that the writer's concentration was interrupted. Good subbies would pick up these errors.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

outandabout wrote: »

Sub-editors who police the grammar, spelling and syntax in all papers and magazines are being made redundant or not being replaced.

The quality of all print media, including The Irish Times, has suffered as a result.

The problems of the Irish Times are far deeper than just the lack of subbies. Bad management, poor investment decisions and the overreliance on opinion pieces by the irrelevant are just a few of them.

Regards...jmcc

Snickers Man

jmcc wrote: »

And there is always the simpler explanation that most of the people that end up in journalism are crap at journalism but very good at recycling PR fluff. The rot started years ago.

Well that's a different issue. But actually, I would have thought that if one's main focus was "recycling PR fluff" one would at least concentrate on making sure that it was spelt properly. That's editing, as opposed to writing.

Good subbies would pick up these errors.

Well quite. My point is that "good subbies" are going the way of the blacksmith.

gudwan

jmcc wrote: »

The problems of the Irish Times are far deeper than just the lack of subbies. Bad management, poor investment decisions and the overreliance on opinion pieces by the irrelevant are just a few of them.

Regards...jmcc

I know it's early days yet, but has there been any change in direction at all since Geraldine Kennedy left? I haven't read it much since the appointment of the new editor, but I've been hoping it would improve as a result.

jdivision

News section's worse imo. It's even more of yesterday's stories today.