Cracker: Send in the Clowns
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In the end, “good grammar” is a social marker. Either you were raised in an environment where you absorbed it without effort or you made an effort, possibly a very big one, to acquire it. In some contexts, I am interested in that, but in others I am not. Some of the reflexive annoyance I feel when I think “poor style” or “bad grammar” is caused by resentment that I put the effort in and other people did not.
I think much confusion happens because we believe that effort or breeding is correlated with the sort of education that claims to produce clear thinking, and consequently we assume that poor style is a marker of muddled thinking.
By the way, wont you all join me in my campaign to eliminate the apostrophe from English, except in cases of genuine contraction? Its just a shibboleth now. I believe 99 out of 10 people whove mastered the possessive apostrophes complexities know nothing of historical inflections, and the other so-called contractions are all words in their own right now. Phonetic spelling is probably impractical but this is something we could do for the little children now at no cost other than the loss of our personal sense of superiority.
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Very few chose to use them, including newspapers that will run listings for Sky channels with much smaller audiences.
Do the papers charge to carry the listings, though? (I know that in the UK at least, it cost money to have a paper carry a non-FTSE100 companies stock price).
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
I believe 99 out of 10 people whove mastered
And that's just how easy it is! Maths on the other hand... ;-)
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Great Hindsight tonight, Damian, and good to see some of those educationalists again (although not Anne Tolley's predecessor Merv Wellington). But if you can, please can you put some screen labels on your commentators each time they appear. I recognised some, but not all of them.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
I believe 99 out of 10 people whove mastered the possessive apostrophes complexities know nothing of historical inflections,
whove... snort. Hoist with your own petard methinks.
;-) -
As part of compiling the Wellington Corpus of Written NZ English, we needed to “normalise” the text samples we had collected (which were all previously published and, presumably, edited writings) so as to allow automatic grammatical tagging of the text, and to allow (as far as possible) automatic word searches to retrieve all examples of a word. We corrected all the nonstandard usage[*] that had somehow survived the original editing process, and we made an explicit note of all changes that we made to the original text. Apostrophes were the single most common usage problem that we needed to note and correct (= 138 errors or ambiguities, 31 of which were confusion of its/it’s, in 1 million words).
[* Within limits. If the usage adopted in the text was a viable alternative in some standard variety of written English, and was used consistently in the text, then we did not correct it.]
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Thomas Johnson, in reply to
whove... snort. Hoist with your own petard methinks.
Unless he was being deliberately ironic, or something?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Unless he was being deliberately ironic, or something?
Well, deliberate.
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When my twelve year old daughter was reading High School prospectuses late last year, she was noting grammatical errors in them (and the actual enrollment forms) as she went.
But then, as she said to me while I was writing something the other evening, "You know, you should really use words for numbers under 10". -
Do the papers charge to carry the listings, though?
In some cases I believe it's the other way around - i.e papers are charged for publishing the listings. But certainly not with TVNZ 7. It's pretty complex and I don't really want to get into it, but I think there's a link between the two things - i.e. having to pay on one hand, so then being less willing to publish the other for free. Not that I've used a paper or magazine for years to find listings...
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My 17 year old daughter greatly enjoyed Hindsight last night, as did I. Confirmed how much/little has changed in education.
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Damian Christie, in reply to
But if you can, please can you put some screen labels on your commentators each time they appear.
If you’re talking about the guests I interview, they are all keyed (key = “screen labels”) and introduced by name. As for the people inside the stories themselves, the keys are generally not on the archive copy of the story - keys are usually inserted live at the time of broadcast, over top of the story, and unless an ‘ex-air’ copy of the show is recorded, they disappear.
I could insert keys over the archive material myself in some cases, but in many cases the names of the people aren’t recorded anywhere, not even in the archive records. It might simply say “IV Teacher” or ’IV Student”. To key some in some stories, but miss out others entirely didn’t seem ideal, so I’ve simply decided not to key anyone in the archive stories. The one exception I’ve made is the ANZAC Day episode, where not knowing that the two guys denying Agent Orange’s effects are the Minister of Health and the Minister of Defence makes quite a difference to the story…
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Damian Christie, in reply to
That's great to hear Geoff, thanks :)
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Russell Brown, in reply to
In some cases I believe it’s the other way around – i.e papers are charged for publishing the listings. But certainly not with TVNZ 7. It’s pretty complex and I don’t really want to get into it, but I think there’s a link between the two things – i.e. having to pay on one hand, so then being less willing to publish the other for free. Not that I’ve used a paper or magazine for years to find listings…
I’ll wade in. Basically, 6 and 7 listings have always been free, but APN tried to use them as leverage to get a better deal from TVNZ on the listings it was paying for.
Apparently APN/Herald management were hostile to carrying the new channels’ listings per se, on the basis that “no one’s going to watch them anyway” – which speaks of nothing so much as pointless corporate hostility, but does cast an interesting light on that nasty little editorial.
The upshot of the spat has been not only no listings, but a near-ban on 6 and 7 coverage in APN publications. This looks particularly weird in The Listener, and speaks volumes for the lack of regard of APN management for readers of its publications. And, in a way, for taxpayers themselves.
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Sacha, in reply to
whove... snort. Hoist with your own petard methinks.
But what else could that word (and sentence) mean? I'd say it was a success.
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Sacha, in reply to
keys are usually inserted live at the time of broadcast, over top of the story, and unless an ‘ex-air’ copy of the show is recorded, they disappear.
Interesting. Are more recent archives ex-air or is this a persistent flaw in the way the TV industry uses identifying labels?
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Sacha, in reply to
APN tried to use them as leverage to get a better deal
And let me guess, no one has reported this to the public or responsible Minister?
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Thanks Russell. I figured I'd trod on enough eggshells this week...
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Apparently APN/Herald management were hostile to carrying the new channels’ listings per se, on the basis that “no one’s going to watch them anyway” – which speaks of nothing so much as pointless corporate hostility, but does cast an interesting light on that nasty little editorial.
Who wrote that petty editorial? The same guy who wrote that rail tunnels would be the end of Auckland?
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Damian Christie, in reply to
Well it's only a persistent flaw for programmes like mine I guess. There are more ex-air copies these days (I believe every ONE News, Close Up, parts of Breakfast are recorded ex-air) which is good because otherwise all the live content would be lost - traditionally only the tape 'inserts' have been saved. For example there is no archive of a newsreader announcing the death of Norm Kirk. The first reference one can find is coverage of the state funeral however many days/weeks later.
Not hard-wiring the keys to the story makes sense though, when a story is on Close Up, say, and I want to use a few shots of that person talking for Q+A, or re-use that quote in another story - you can't key over another key, and having the Close Up branding in the middle of say, a Sunday story, would look weird.
However these days the cataloging process is much better, so all those names are being recorded for the future, which means Hindsight 2050 will be much more able to include all those missing names. I assume it was the Merv Wellington story you were referring to?
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If you're interested, here's the Archive shotlist for that story with all the names - this refers to the original story, which I have edited down considerably, so people listed might be missing:
00:00 GV Merv Wellington, Minister of Education in primary classroom, children sitting on mat, Merv Wellington shakes teacher's hand.
00:29 I/V Jack Shallcrass, Educationalist, re Merv Wellington is unpopular due to paternalistic stereotypic teacher personality.
01:00 MS boy and girl raising flag, TRACKING SHOT row of students watching.
01:09 GV group of primary school-children walking home.
01:12 Students in secondary school classroom, primary schoolroom.
01:17 New Zealand flag flying.
01:19 I/V David Kerr, President New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), re has always flown the flag but concerned about making it compulsory.
01:47 GVs INT secondary school classroom during lesson.
02:09 I/V Tony Steel, President, Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA), re Merv Wellington's support for UE against overwhelming research on it, Merv Wellington's ruling that there be only 10 weeks for submissions on curriculum review.
02:49 GV computer screen, GV school students at computer terminals, CU keyboard.
04:33 I/V David Kerr re doesn't believe schools have dropped basic 3 Rs standards.
04:51 MS Merv Wellington enters office.
04:59 COLOUR PRINT, CU computer screen, CU hands on keyboard.
05:13 I/V Keith Johnston, Coalition for Open Government, re threatened legal action to get Merv Wellington to release a report on use of school computers and core curriculum review.
05:51 MS Merv Wellington in church, GV congregation.
06:12 I/V Jack Shallcrass re he is unable or unwilling to negotiate.
06:30 Street outside movie theatre, CU poster "Hercules" and blind child at typewriter.
07:29 I/V David Kerr re Merv Wellington's ban on GY films, disagrees with this.
07:52 I/V Tony Steel re greatest thing (Merv) Wellington has done is the secondary staffing report.
08:10 CUs Merv Wellington in crowd leaving building (booing).
08:19 I/V David Kerr re Merv Wellington's secretive planning and lack of consultation/implementation.
08:39 I/V Tony Steel re his aloofness and decision making isolation.
09:39 END. -
Sacha, in reply to
trod on enough eggshells
And he has a foot on both eggshells, as it were. Brave.
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Sacha, in reply to
I assume it was the Merv Wellington story you were referring to?
Nope. More generalised. I understand the production-end logic, but it's a relief to hear at least some content is being preserved in the form that it was screened. That's what audiences remember.
Eventually, I imagine current facial-recognition and identity management will be integrated features of production/broadcast systems. Heck, if Facebook can do it...
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Damian Christie, in reply to
And he has a foot on both eggshells, as it were. Brave
Who? Huh? Whaa?
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
papers are charged for publishing the listings. But certainly not with TVNZ 7. It’s pretty complex and I don’t really want to get into it,
I, for one, would find that subject interesting. Mainly because the listings for a commercial channel should be classified as advertising whereas listings for a public broadcast channel would be a public service in itself, surely.
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