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mr. language grumbler
Can't journalists for respectable newspapers come up with a better opening line than that annoying phrase, "When it comes to ..."? What is the "it" that is coming?
Surely this particular example could have just as easily begun, "Law enforcement officials vocally advocate one particular approach for protecting children on the Internet." Or any number of other ways.
And while we're at it, enough with the "second ... after" gap. Here's a good example: a headline reading "India, the second largest newspaper market after China," which immediately raises the question, "So then what's the first largest one after China?" Of course, on reading the article one finds that the headline actually means "India, the second largest newspaper market in the world (China is the first)" but that's not what it says.
Both of these annoyances were once rare, but they're now very common, and very annoying.
Surely this particular example could have just as easily begun, "Law enforcement officials vocally advocate one particular approach for protecting children on the Internet." Or any number of other ways.
And while we're at it, enough with the "second ... after" gap. Here's a good example: a headline reading "India, the second largest newspaper market after China," which immediately raises the question, "So then what's the first largest one after China?" Of course, on reading the article one finds that the headline actually means "India, the second largest newspaper market in the world (China is the first)" but that's not what it says.
Both of these annoyances were once rare, but they're now very common, and very annoying.
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More specifically, I think much of the problem is the immediacy of publishing, even for dead tree newspapers. Formerly, a reporter would submit a story, it would go through an editor or three and the typesetter/copyeditor would look at the whole page. At any point in the process, corrections could be made. Yes, there were some spectacular mistakes and more plebeian omissions. Not everything would be caught, and mediocre language slipped through all too often... but at least there was a process, and one good editor could almost singlehandedly improve the literacy of a region. (My father was one such.)
Now, we have spell check for the most egregious mistakes, and the pressure to write quickly and publish in a timely fashion combined with budget cuts eliminating many of the layers. Papers make it easy for the reporter to dash off a story, it gets a cursory check, and out it goes.
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"The second largest newspaper market, after China" -- simple.
But... it's like people are starting to think that punctuation doesn't matter.
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I was going to add that I think the punctuation problem is one symptom of the fact that the culture is moving toward becoming an oral one again. Literacy is declining -- in terms of mastery of the written forms and actually knowing much about the literary heritage.
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