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I know more than a few of us here do writing or proofreading (even if proofreading only your own stuff). There's a new (?) stand-up comic on the scene, Taylor Mali, and he does a lot of "cerebral" material ... kinda' like a modern day version of Robert Klein. My sister, a teacher, linked me to some of his videos on YouTube.
The link here is to a video called "The Impotence of Proofreading" and in it he mentions the folly of relying on spell-check, for all its various weaknesses ... doesn't catch missing words, doesn't catch wrong words that are spelled correctly, etc. It's a cleverly done video, and when you watch it you'll probably decide he had to have memorized it word for word. Can't image that performance being improvised, unless his brain works very very differently than most.
Reminded me of an error I once caught while proofing some content for a website. The writer had meant to type "closest friends" but typed "closet friends," and of course, that's something spell-check would not catch. Plus, in its context, it would have quite embarrassing had it gone to print.
Heimhenge said:
Reminded me of an error I once caught while proofing some content for a website. The writer had meant to type "closest friends" but typed "closet friends," and of course, that's something spell-check would not catch. Plus, in its context, it would have quite embarrassing had it gone to print.
Because I get easily distracted by outside noises, I often watch television with the closed-captioning turned on, and I once spotted a real howler in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess. The episode involved an assassination plot at a beauty pageant, and at one point the contestant "Miss Artiphys", played by Karen Dior, explained why she had been so secretive up to that point and asked for discretion, saying "I'm not ready to go public with this".
Unfortunately, someone at closed-captioning central rendered it as "go pubic with this".
Particularly embarrassing given that "Miss Artiphys's" shocking secret was the same as Karen Dior's (look her up on Wikipedia for the spoiler if you don't know what I'm referring to).
I remember that Xena episode. I was not running captions, so I would have missed that blooper (given the same transcriber). But often, at area sports bars, where the sound is off, and the CC on, I've seen some funny transcriptions. Nothing (yet) close to the examples in this thread. For live feeds, I can see where that puts a bit of pressure on the transcribers. But Xena ain't live, at least in the broadcasting sense.
So how does a taped episode get transcribed, but not proofed, before feeding to subscribers? Is there no quality control? I have no experience with this aspect of multimedia. How can something like "go pubic" slip through the filters?
I will not go pubic with the name of the company, but one company's national ads came terribly, terribly close to being released with a typo: a sub-headline in the ad was intended to say Proven Methodologies; at the last possible second, someone noticed it actually said Proven Mythologies.
I know it is completely true because I worked for the company, and a few select people who had access to the finished, but unreleased, ad keep it framed on the wall to strike fear in the keyboards of all who see.
A quick Google search of the internet proves we are not alone:
Proven Mythologies SAP provides proven mythologies, tools, content and benchmarking data that will enable you to analyze the potential value of new projects and increased returns from previous investments. [NOTE: SAP is a multinational company whose slogan is "SAP The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP." I guess that might be a proven mythology. -Glenn]
Proven Mythologies Proven Mythologies- “Partnership In Action “ … To correct these mistakes, distributor's evaluation priorities changed to give higher priority to the software companies' industry knowledge, business processes and implementation mythologies and less on price and software functionality.
Proven Mythologies We pride ourselves on carefully strategizing and using a comprehensive approach with proven mythologies designed to recover monies owed to you.
Proven Mythologies Adelaide Hydraulics Pty Ltd is a privately owned company established in 1973 it has built its reputation through time, experience and proven mythologies. Its employees are highly trained and motivated.
Proven Mythologies A highly trained staff, commitment to performing through needs analysis, and proven mythologies that stem from year (sic) of experience make IVCi uniquely qualified to develop solution (sic) that take the complexities out of technology.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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