[kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

[Catherine Adeya]

I think there is a wrong impression that a Journalism graduate is best suited to edit a paper. You may be better off with an English major graduate, Linguistics graduate and Information Sciences (Publishing Major) graduate. The IS course at MU had a renowned editing course in the '80s with the late Jonathan Kariara. I do not know how they are doing now. I remember him teaching an editing class and emphasizing the importance of good grammar, good English and simplicity especially when communicating to the wider market. I remember "Class, it is easier to say "walk" rather than "perambulate" even though they mean the same thing.  He gave an example of certain words that you must be extremely careful about when editing...they are words that you must counter-check and DO NOT AT ANY COST rely on  your computer (the class already had experience in this). 

Let me give you an example of one of those words and forgive me as I have no intention to be vulgar. Two years ago I was in Dar and I was reading their top local paper. The heading in one of the lead stories was 'President opens a Pubic library'......I can't remember whether it was a library or what but you know the word I am referring to. I actually drew the attention of someone I knew to this major error and she promised to get in touch with the editor. My point is such words on a spell-checker will be correct, it requires as well trained eye to still sweep over the document and pick words like this. Even in the the Kenyan case we lack this seriously yet the qualified people are there. I am glad this topic has come up because sometimes I just put the paper aside as I am horrified at the level of grammar and editorial mistakes. The same happens with the news that is scrolled during News broadcasts....and while I am at that... some of the Opinion
 questions are SO ABSURD and even worse they are  grammatically wrong...wrong...wrong....

Enough said....

Nyaki



________________________________
From: Victor Bwire <victor at article19.org>
To: elizaslider at yahoo.com
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 11:29 PM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Infact it is the ICT use that is the cause of the problem- given the little ICT literacy by some of our newsrooms- most of our sub editors learn computer by on job-rarely able to master command of the computer functions- including grammer, spell checks-it will continue happening



Previously, we used to print hard copies of the articles for editing manually with red pens- thus very few mistakes- but now

Many of journalism courses do not include introduction to computer lessons- so how will the graduates know how to use them



Who regulates journalism training or draws the course or approves the same in the country anyway- if you even happen to see some course outlines offered in some of the colleges and universities offering journalism  including Government ones- you will feel sorry





________________________________
From: kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org at lists.kictanet.or.ke [kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org at lists.kictanet.or.ke] on behalf of james ratemo [jratemo at gmail.com]
Sent: 04 October 2011 21:16
To: Victor Bwire
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Bwana PS what are you insinuating? We open our newsrooms fro the so called English majors? Some of them are in the newsrooms already...maybe they are sleeping on the job...my opinion

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:11 PM, <bitange at jambo.co.ke<mailto:bitange at jambo.co.ke>> wrote:
All of today's newspapers had several grammatical errors.  At this time and age of ICT, is it not too embarrasing to have such errors?  We have  thousands of English majors without jobs.  It is time for media to be thorough in what they do by utilizing our many graduates without jobs.  As a Kenyan I get embarrased to see such errors.

Ndemo.




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--
James Ratemo
Online Sub-editor/ICT reporter
Nation Media Group,
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