Staying in the UK with no internet connection for a week was a strange experience for someone who spends as many hours on-line as I usually do. Sadly, it didn’t result in vast quantities of poems being written long-hand in notebooks or anything very creative like that.
It did, however leave me a few photos that I intended for the blog and haven’t yet posted. Like this ‘co-operative lamb shank in gravy’.
Another BBC website headline that interests me: 
There’s nothing actually wrong with it, of course. It heads a story that starts:
Serial killer franchise Saw has been named the most successful horror movie series by the Guinness World Records.
But the phrasing demonstrates the problems of trying to write headlines that fit into a measured space on a web page (or printed page, for that matter.)
Continue reading “see saw”
From the BBC website, this headline catches my eye:
Four women have set a new record by becoming the first women to row non-stop around Britain, organisers say.
Under the headline Dolphin ‘superpod’ seen by wildlife spotters off Skye, the BBC start a story with this slightly disconcerting lede:
A group of wildlife spotters have encountered a massive pod of dolphins on a boat trip off the north coast of Skye.
I guess even dolphins must get tired of swimming sometimes.
In the post Sound Reasoning, I talked about how in Spanish each letter corresponds to a single sound. This must make it hard for a Spaniard to visualise the spelling of a word when he hears it spoken in English, and therefore must make comprehension more difficult.
It does, however, add to the pleasure of watching films in English with amateur Spanish subtitles. I admire the guys who attempt what is clearly a task beyond their capabilities. They gather up their inadequate grammar and try and create meaning from sound alone.
Continue reading “sound and sense”
don't confuse the narrator 