press – Page 4 – don't confuse the narrator

the value of good writing

There’s a story up on the BBC website at the moment that quotes Charles Duncombe, “an online entrepreneur”, as saying that a single spelling mistake on a website can cut online sales in half. (For Spanish readers of the blog, there’s a Spanish version of the article available on “BBC Mundo”.)

Duncombe is apparently “shocked” at the poor quality of written English of staff recruited by his companies.

Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.

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great expectations

For reasons that will be more immediately obvious to some readers than to others, I was startled to see this subject line in my mailbox (from the digital version of Metro UK):

But seriously… “Gwyneth’s marriage ‘not perfect'”. What marriage ever has been?
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news and clichés

Reading the ‘newspaper’ on Tuesday – the 20p Independent i – I got the impression that the concept of news must have changed considerably since I used to read the UK press on a regular basis. There was no text other than ‘headlines’ on the front page, and inside it seemed all to be gossip, sport or opinion. Even what I think was intended as an editorial struck me as no more weighty than a teenager’s blog entry.

Last night, I watched the BBC news on television instead. Sadly it was no better.
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what’s in a name

Now that, all over Spain, we’ve dutifully reflected without concentrating, and done our civic duty and voted for whoever we’ve voted for, abstained in protest, or blotted our ballots, the results are out. The Guardian website headline reads:

Which is all very well, but although popular can be correctly translated as ‘of the people’, the PP, the Partido Popular, is not what I would call a People’s party.
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mod comms

I guess most readers know I’m based in Spain and although I try and keep this blog politically neutral, I suspect some might be wondering why I haven’t commented on the “No les votes” protests, which have been going on since last Sunday.

Or perhaps not.

I’ve had a look at the Guardian website and the news page for Spain seems to be stuck several days ago and make no mention whatsoever of the protests.

I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad. But it’s got me wondering again about the world of modern communications.
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