Wednesday, August 29, 2007

MEDIA BLUNDERS

This morning I saw on TV a plug for today's Sis episode. It was read aloud as it appeared on the screen thus: "Mother's knows best!" My gosh.

Several months back, I also caught a blunder on the news on TV where the first name given for a public figure was not correct. That time I called the TV station but I was no longer able to follow up to determine whether they corrected the error.

I also pointed out to Howie Severino how a media personality would always introduce himself as "Ako naman si ****" even if he spoke first. The word naman implies being next to someone/speaking after someone thus. Howie said I was very perceptive to have noticed that, which made me hope that the media personality would change his self-introduction, but no, he's still at it.

Still another oft-repeated blunder is "And now, here's Joey and Vic." The correct expression there would be "Here are Joey and Vic", but I guess, "here's" is preferred as it's monosyllabic? duhh.

Yet another media blunder goes something like: "Mia wants Mr. Frank Cruz to see her exhibit. He is his father." People mistakenly use the gender of the pronoun following rather than the gender of the antecedent. The correct expression should read, "He is her father." I pointed out this perpetual blunder to a broadsheet, but it recurs every so often.

Oh well, tao lang, except that these errors are so elementary.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You should read the local newspaper. This will give you a longer list of media blunders.

When I was a kid and I had to write something, I would sometimes try to remember how it was written in the newspapers or the magazine (Reader's Digest usually).

With all these careless grammatical errors in the media, it seems no longer safe to tell your kid to "go read the papers" as my Dad often told me to do.