Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Where are the Proofreaders and Editors of Yore?


       Some sentences from a Sunday, September 21, 2014, article on classical music in the L.A.Times Calendar section:


       *   "She [pianist Yuja Wang] played Prokofiev's Second Piano Concert."

       *   "The Symphonie Fantastique...was irresistible joyous."

       *   "The Prokofiev concerto [conducted by Bringuier] had an entirely different character than the heavier one [conductor] Dudamel made last year in Caracas..."

       I'm missing the actual editor, copyreader, anyone! to help catch the mistakes in the writing above.  The  writer will do the writer's best but can't catch everything in the tight time-frame journalistic deadlines bring to bear.

       *     No final "o" on "Concerto."

       *     It's a "bly" ending not a "ble" ending in the second example.  And no spell-check would catch either of these first two because in both cases what's on the page is an acceptable (but different) WORD.

       *     The third instance, what gets me is the word "made."  What's going on with the grammar and sense here.  What did Dudamel make, a performance, a recording, a character?  Someone should have caught and clarified this.

       The digital age is wonderful and promising, but it can't fill the human's place in every instance.

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